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Word in Life Ministries
Biblical, Historical, and Philosophical Studies Institute
His Story Through the Ages:
AD Seminar
Session One
I. The Coming of the Christian Gospel versus the Heteros Gospels
A. From the beginning of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus Christ, the Satanic counterfeit and opposition emerged in the
forms of alternative gospels.
1. Ebionites – The Ebionites were a “Jewish-Christian sect . . . .
They taught that Jesus was a mere man who by his scrupulous
obedience to the Law was ‘justified’ and became the Messiah”
(Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language [Dallas:
Word Publishing, 1995], 50). The Ebionites, therefore, were
focused on ‘works righteousness’, which is the very thing Paul
was refuting in the book of Galatians. Although there is no
concrete evidence to support a direct relationship to the
Ebionite sect to those that Paul was referring to in Galatians
3:1-14, it is certainly not far afield to suspect that they, or some
group like them was whom Paul was addressing. Philip Schaff
also points out the effect of the Ebionites well into the second
century AD:
The Judaizing heresy was indeed continued outside of the
Catholic church by the sect of the Ebionites during the second
century; and in the church itself the spirit of formalism and
bigotry assumed new shapes by substituting Christian rites and
ceremonies for the typical shadows of the Mosaic dispensation.
But whenever and wherever this tendency manifests itself we
have the best antidote in the Epistles of Paul. (Philip Schaff, The
History of the Christian Church, vol. 1, Apostolic Christianity:
AD 1-100 [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910; reprint,
Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Companys, 1985],
360)
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2. Gnosticism – Gnosticism was an ancient heresy that embraced
both a docetic and dualistic concept of reality. Docetism comes
from the Greek verb doke,wdoke,wdoke,wdoke,w (dokeō), which means “to seem.”
One group of Gnostics held to the belief that the ‘Ultimate
Good’, or God, was so far above the evil matter that he could
have no contact with anything of a material nature. Thus, the
very idea of Jesus the Christ actually having a real body was
absolutely repugnant to them. Therefore, they saw Jesus as
merely a ‘ghost’, if you will, who only appeared, or ‘seemed’ to
be real. This is one reason we see Jesus making the statement
in Luke 24:39-43 about his resurrected body to the disciples:
See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see,
for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." 40
And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and
His feet. 41
And while they still could not believe it for joy and
were marveling, He said to them, "Have you anything here to
eat?" 42
And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took
it and ate it before them.
The other group of Gnostics, who also held to the belief that
the ‘Ultimate Good’ could not be touched with the “feeling
of our infirmities” (KJV, Hebrews 4:15), taught that the
Christ Spirit descended on Jesus at His baptism, but then left
Him before the crucifixion. Therefore, that which was
punished for the sins of mankind was not the Christ Spirit,
but simply the man, Jesus of Nazareth. This concept of
thinking expresses their dualistic belief that the world
consisted of two spiritual forces – good and evil – and,
consequently, these two could not coalesce in any manner.
Bruce Shelley points out the following Gnostic beliefs
concerning the eternal conflict between good and evil:
a. All matter is evil.
b. The ‘Creator God’, therefore, was considered to be an
inferior entity because he made the world.
c. Thus, the actual act of creation was looked upon as an act
of debauchery by an inferior deity.
d. The Gnostics, therefore, had in their cosmogony a series
of emanations that descended from the ‘Ultimate Good’
all the way down to the ‘Creator God’, who was looked
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upon by Gnostics as the ‘bottom of the rung’ of these
deified emanations.
e. Each deified emanation was capable of producing
successive, deified emanations, but each successive
emanation was inferior to its parent deity.
f. Thus, the last and final deity was the ‘Creator God’ who
was foolish enough to create the material universe, and,
according to Gnostic teaching, this deity was none other
than “the God of the Jews” (Shelley, 51).
The actual word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnw,sijgnw,sijgnw,sijgnw,sij
(Gnosis), which means knowledge. Thus, salvation for the
Gnostic did not consist of being redeemed from sin through the
atonement of Christ, but rather through attaining successive
levels of knowledge that at some point would unite the human
seeker with the ‘Ultimate Good’, and where the seeker would
attain to a level of deity himself, having escaped through his
superior knowledge the corruption of the matter of his body.
Thus, with all Gnostics, there was a complete denial that the
Christ Spirit could in any way become human flesh and
experience the plight of humanity in any way because it was
so far removed from the degradation of the corruption of
human flesh. This, therefore, is in direct contrast to
EVERYTHING the Gospel tells us about the person of Jesus
Christ:
Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things,
that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in
things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of
the people. 18
For since He Himself was tempted in that
which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those
who are tempted. . . . Since then we have a great high priest
who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,
let us hold fast our confession. 15
For we do not have a high
priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One
who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. 16
Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of
grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help
in time of need. (Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:14-16)
Another very important thing to note about the Gnostics is that
there were two views concerning pursuing fleshly lusts – one
was to practice asceticism as a means of purifying one’s mind,
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and thereby accelerating one’s ascent to divinity, and the other
was a full-blown, antinomian, hedonistic approach based on the
view that since all matter is evil and the only thing that matters
is the pursuit of ‘pure knowledge’, the pursuit of fleshly lust
will simply accentuate the evil of the world and renounce the
Jewish ‘Creator God’ and his pseudo laws for righteousness.
The following is from the Catholic Encyclopedia which
addresses this particular issue:
As a moral law was given by the God of the Jews, and opposition
to the God of the Jews was a duty, the breaking of the moral law
to spite its give was considered a solemn obligation. Such a sect,
called the Nicolaites, existed in Apostolic times, their principle,
according to Origen, was parachresthai te sarki [this is a Latin
transliteration of the Greek - ðáñá÷ñçóèáé ôå óáñêé - “to
actively pursue the lust of the flesh”]. (The Catholic
Encyclopedia, Classic 1914 Edition, www.NewAdvent,org)
One very important thing that resulted in the conflict with
Gnosticism was the Apostle’s Creed. The handout provided is
a copy of that very important creed, which was produced
sometime in the 2nd
century, as well as its comparative
refutation of Gnosticism.
3. The Nag Hammadi Texts – The Nag Hammadi Texts were
found in Egypt in December , 1945, with the first of the twelve
Codices, Codex III, being acquired and recorded in the Coptic
Museum of Cairo on October 4, 1946. These are Gnostic texts
for the most part, and they are translated from Greek into
Coptic. The significance of these texts is that they are the
original, Gnostic writings that up until 1945, all we had were
the writings against Gnosticism from the early Church Fathers,
but we did not possess any of the extant Gnostic writings
themselves. The one book I would like for us to look at is The
Gospel of Mary. Portions of this book are missing, but the one
I want to present to you describes sin not as a real, moral entity
that destroys the whole of the human race, and from which we
must be redeemed by the blood of Christ, but rather it is
presented as a false attitude that misdirects one in his pursuit of
the “Good,” and therefore, it is our thought processes that must
be changed so that we can become one with the “Good”:
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Peter said to him, “Since you have explained everything to us,
tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?” The Savior said,
“There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the
things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called ‘sin.’
That is why the Good came into your midst, to the (essence) of
every nature, in order to restore it to its root.” Then He
continued and said, “That is why you [become sick] and die, for
[. . .] of the one who [. . . He who] understands, let him
understand. [Matter gave birth to] a passion that has no equal,
which proceeded from (something) contrary to nature. Then there
arises a disturbance in its whole body. 31) That is why I said to
you, ‘Be of good courage,’ and if you are discouraged (be)
encouraged in the presence of the different forms of nature. He
who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (James M. Robinson, ed. The
Nag Hammadi Library [San Francisco: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1988], 524-525)
Thus, you can easily see that the deception of Gnosticism was
very real, and its roots go all the way back to the fall in Genesis
3:1-7:
Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the
field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the
woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of
the garden'?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat
the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 "but of the fruit of the tree
which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not
eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.' " 4 Then the serpent
said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5 "For God knows
that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 So when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the
eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit
and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. 7 Then
the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they
were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves coverings.
That very same deception has been with us from the fall until
this present day, and it will remain so until the Great White
Throne Judgment (Revelation 20:11-15).
B. In the 2nd
century AD there were two other major heresies that
emerged that have had lasting effects even up to today, and both of
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these were part of the ultimate establishment of the New Testament
Canon.
1. A man named Marcion, whose farther was a Bishop, came on
the scene around 140 AD. However, unlike his father, Marcion
began to embrace aspects of Gnosticism, and in particular, he
looked with great disdain on the God of the Old Testament,
who he said was only the God of the Jewish people, but the
God of the New Testament, the Christian God, was a God of
grace and love for all people. Consequently, he was intensely
opposed by the Church Fathers, and Irenaeus in particular
addresses his heresies:
Cerdo was one who took his system from the followers of
Simon, and came to live at Rome in the time of Hyginus, who
held the ninth place in the episcopal succession from the apostles
downwards. He taught that the God proclaimed by the law and
the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the
former was known, but the latter unknown; while the one also
was righteous, but the other benevolent. Marcion of Pontus
succeeded him, and developed his doctrine. In so doing, he
advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is
proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to
be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of
purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being
derived from that father who is above the God that made the
world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the
governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was
manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judaea,
abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that
God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator.
Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke,
removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord,
and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in
which the Lord is recorded as most clearly confessing that the
Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his
disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are
those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us,
furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it.
In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul,
removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who
made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical
writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that
they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord. Salvation
will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned his
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doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is
incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his blasphemy
against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as
with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct
opposition to the truth, — that Cain, and those like him, and the
Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine,
all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were
saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their
running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their
kingdom. But the serpent which was in Marcion declared that
Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who
sprang from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and
those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For
since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly
tempting them, so now they suspected that He was tempting
them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His announcement: and
for this reason he declared that their souls remained in Hades.
(Alexander Roberts & James Donaldaon, eds., The Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 1, The Apostolic Fathers – Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
[Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985],
352)
The upshot of this confrontation is that the early church was
forced to look at the Scripture and solidify its authority, both
the Old and the New Testaments. Thus, they chose to validate
and reestablish as divinely authoritative the Pauline “Pastorals
and the letters of the other apostles and to link all the letters to
four Gospels by using the Book of Acts as the bridge” (Shelley,
63). In addition, the church fully repudiated Marcion’s
rejection of the Old Testament, and by doing so, it established
two very important points: (1) “First, it insisted that faith for the
Christian would have to reconcile both the wrath and love of
God” (Ibid., 64); (2) “Second, . . . the church underscored the
importance of history for the Christian faith” (Ibid.).
2. Between about 155-175 AD, a man named Montanus addressed
what was becoming a spiritual deadness in the church that was
the result of an attempt to compromise and become ‘relevant’ to
its surrounding intellectual culture. This is something that
always occurs with the church, and today this attempt to be
relevant may be seen in what is called the ‘emergent church’.
Typically when this attempt at relevancy occurs, you have both
good and bad results, and within both the good and bad, you
have various aspects of how each is manifest. Montanus would
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definitely be classified in the bad result, but he didn’t start out
that way. Montanus might be called the precursor to the
modern day Pentecostal/Charismatic movement. With
Montanus came a renewal of the ministry of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, and with that renewal, an overall spiritual renewal
and hunger for the things of God in all areas of the Christian
life. However, with that positive aspect of renewal also came
some negatives. He had two women with him who were
prophetesses, but there was not any sexual perversion going on.
The problem arose as they prophesied of the soon return of
Christ, and the clear impression given to their followers was
that they, Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla (the two women),
were the prophets of the final days before the return of Christ,
and if the people didn’t listen to and give heed to their
prophecies, they would be rejecting God’s Word for them and
committing blasphemy. On the other hand, most all of the early
Church Fathers, except Tertullian, regarded them as ‘false
prophets’, and obviously their prophecies were false. The early
church still believed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but
Montanus forced the early Church Fathers to recognize that
unchecked prophecies and miraculous manifestations could lead
to false teachings and serious misdirection of the people. Thus,
the early church was forced to recognize the apostolic gospels
and writings as the grid through which all such utterances and
teachings would be judged and examined.
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Session Two
II. The Establishment of the New Testament Canon
A. The establishment of the New Testament Canon was a long process
that reached its climax in the later part of the 4th
century AD.
1. The enclosed list you have gives an approximate grouping of
the time frames in which the various books of the New
Testament became recognized as authoritative.
2. The following is an analysis of the four major individuals and
the one Church Council that represent the formative steps in the
development and authoritative establishment of the New
Testament Canon.
a. The ‘Muratorian Canon’ is named for the man who found
this document, L. A. Muratoria (1672-1750). The document
itself is a 7th century Latin text, which was translated from a
Greek original. Muratoria published it in 1740, and it is
thought that this list dates back to Pius, Bishop of Rome
(140-154), due to the fact that reference is made to him in
verses 44-47:
[44] But Hermas composed The Shepherd quite recently in our
times in the city of Rome, while his brother, Pius, the bishop,
occupied the [episcopal] seat of the city of Rome. [45] And
therefore, it should indeed be read, but it cannot be published
for the people in the Church, [46] neither among the Prophets,
since their number is complete, [47] nor among the Apostles
for it is after their time (?).
Thus, the date of the actual writing of this document would
be sometime in the last quarter of the 2nd
century AD (i.e.,
between 175-200). That means that by the beginning of the
3rd
century AD, there was a move, motivated by the
necessity of establishing an authoritative text to support
truth and combat heresies, to confirm and solidify those
writings that were considered to be ‘inspired’ and those that
were not.
b. Origen (185-254) divided the New Testament manuscripts
into two categories: (1) those that were universally accepted
(the Gospels – Revelation of John); and (2) those that were
disputed (see the list).
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c. The Church Historian, Eusebius (263-339), in his
Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, Chapter 25:1-7, gives the
following appraisal of New Testament writings:
Since we are dealing with this subject it is proper to sum up the
writings of the New Testament which have been already
mentioned. First then must be put the holy quaternion of the
Gospels; following them the Acts of the Apostles. After this
must be reckoned the epistles of Paul; next in order the extant
former epistle of John, and likewise the epistle of Peter, must
be maintained. After them is to be placed, if it really seem
proper, the Apocalypse of John, concerning which we shall
give the different opinions at the proper time. These then
belong among the accepted writings. Among the disputed
writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are
extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the
second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and
third of John, whether they belong to the evangelist or to
another person of the same name. Among the rejected writings
must be reckoned also the Acts of Paul, and the so-called
Shepherd, and the Apocalypse of Peter, and in addition to these
the extant epistle of Barnabas, and the so-called Teachings of
the Apostles; and besides, as I said, the Apocalypse of John, if
it seem proper, which some, as I said, reject, but which others
class with the accepted books. And among these some have
placed also the Gospel according to the Hebrews, with which
those of the Hebrews that have accepted Christ are especially
delighted. And all these may be reckoned among the disputed
books. But we have nevertheless felt compelled to give a
catalogue of these also, distinguishing those works which
according to ecclesiastical tradition are true and genuine and
commonly accepted, from those others which, although not
canonical but disputed, are yet at the same time known to most
ecclesiastical writers—we have felt compelled to give this
catalogue in order that we might be able to know both these
works and those that are cited by the heretics under the name of
the apostles, including, for instance, such books as the Gospels
of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, or of any others besides
them, and the Acts of Andrew and John and the other apostles,
which no one belonging to the succession of ecclesiastical
writers has deemed worthy of mention in his writings. And
further, the character of the style is at variance with apostolic
usage, and both the thoughts and the purpose of the things that
are related in them are so completely out of accord with true
orthodoxy that they clearly show themselves to be the fictions
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of heretics. Wherefore they are not to be placed even among
the rejected writings, but are all of them to be cast aside as
absurd and impious. (Loeb Classical Library, Eusebius
Ecclesiastical History, vol. 1 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1926; reprint, 1980], 257-259)
d. The fourth individual of significance with regard to the NT
Canon is Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria (293-373). In
367, Athanasius wrote his annual Festal Letter to the
Egyptian Churches, which was a letter informing them of
the date of Easter and Lent. In this Festel Letter of 367,
Bishop Ahtanasius lists the 27 books that we now have in
our New Testament as authoritatively inspired. The
following is from that Letter:
Again it is not tedious to speak of the [books] of the New
Testament. These are, the four Gospels, according to Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. Afterwards, the Acts of the Apostles
and Epistles (called Catholic), seven, viz. of James, one; of
Peter, two; of John, three; after these, one of Jude. In addition,
there are fourteen Epistles of Paul, written in this order. The
first, to the Romans; then two to the Corinthians; after these, to
the Galatians; next, to the Ephesians; then to the Philippians;
then to the Colossians; after these, two to the Thessalonians,
and that to the Hebrews; and again, two to Timothy; one to
Titus; and lastly, that to Philemon. And besides, the Revelation
of John. These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst
may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these
alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add
to these, neither let him take ought from these. For concerning
these the Lord put to shame the Sadducees, and said, ‘Ye do
err, not knowing the Scriptures.’ And He reproved the Jews,
saying, ‘Search the Scriptures, for these are they that testify of
Me.’ But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of
necessity; that there are other books besides these not indeed
included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read
by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the
word of godliness. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom
of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and that which is
called the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. But the
former, my brethren, are included in the Canon, the latter being
[merely] read; nor is there in any place a mention of
apocryphal writings. But they are an invention of heretics, who
write them when they choose, bestowing upon them their
approbation, and assigning to them a date, that so, using them
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as ancient writings, they may find occasion to lead astray the
simple. (Philip Schaff & Henry Wace, Nicene & Post-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 4, St. Athanasius [Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980], 552)
e. The final step in this process was the Third Council of
Carthage in 397 AD, at which the following statement was
made for both the OT and the NT:
It was also determined that besides the Canonical Scriptures
nothing be read in the Church under the title of divine
Scriptures. The Canonical Scriptures are these: Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua the son of
Nun, Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings, 3 two books of
Paraleipomena, 4 Job, the Psalter, five books of Solomon (Pr,
Eccl, Song, Wisdom, Sirach), 5 the books of the twelve
prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, Daniel, Tobit, Judith,
Esther, two books of Esdras, 6 two books of the Maccabees. Of
the New Testament: four books of the Gospels, one book of the
Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, one
epistle of the same [writer] to the Hebrews, two Epistles of the
Apostle Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude, one
book of the Apocalypse of John. Let this be made known also
to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface, or to other bishops of
those parts, for the purpose of confirming that Canon because
we have received from our fathers that those books must be
read in the Church. Let it also be allowed that the Passions of
Martyrs be read when their festivals are kept. (www.bible-
researcher.com/carthage.html)
C. There were three primary things that established the canonicity of
Scripture:
1. Those books that ultimately became recognized as God’s
inspired Word had what might be called a self-evidencing
quality about them. That is, there is a supernatural and
transcendent power and truth that penetrates to the very spirit of
man, convincing and drawing him to a saving relationship with
Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. The second thing that was a major consideration was the
proliferation and use of Scripture in worship and teaching
throughout Christendom. That is, if a book or writing was only
used in a particular area, versus one that was used from
Alexandria to Damascus, to Rome, then the latter held more
weight.
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3. The third and most important item was the relationship of a
book or writing to an apostle in some way. There were quite a
few forged writings, but time and truth sifted through such
nefarious attempts, and, once again, the transcendent inspiration
and anointing of God’s Spirit would ultimately bear witness to
its authenticity and authoritativeness.
B. The establishment of the New Testament Canon became the
pivotal point upon which the authority of the Church rested. As
we will also see, however, tradition and Apostolic Succession
became the ultimate appeal in the conflict between Rome and
Constantinople, which ultimately resulted in a rupture between
the Western and Eastern Church on July 16, 1054. From that
time until this, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic
Churches have been divided over which is the true, historical
Church of Jesus Christ, and their focus and basis of their
difference is their appeal to tradition and Apostolic Succession,
NOT TO THE WORD OF GOD!
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Session Three
III. The Four Major Heresies Concerning the Person of Jesus Christ &
Pelagianism
A. The first of these major heresies was Arianism.
1. Arius (250-336) was a pastor in Egypt, and ca. 318, he began to
teach that Jesus was not fully God, that His nature was entirely
different from God’s, and that he was neither eternal nor
omnipotent. Thus, he saw Jesus as the first created being, and,
therefore, in no way possessing the same essence as the eternal
and changeless God. Consequently, his deity was only in a
marginal way, but He was not equal with God in His true
essence.
2. However, Bishop Alexander of Alexandria called a synod in
320 to deal with Arius’ teaching, and the result was great
upheaval in Alexandria. Emperor Constantine called for a
Church Council to convene at Nicea on May 30, 325.
3. On July 25, 325, the Council of Nicea adjourned with the
Nicene Creed, which is to this day the standard for orthodoxy in
Roman, Eastern, Anglican, and Evangelical churches. The
following handout contains the creed, as well as how it refutes
the tenets of Arianism. In essence, the Nicene Creed stated the
Christ was fully divine.
B. The next major heresy involved a man named Apollinarius (310-
390). Apollinarius taught that the divine Logos displaced the
rational soul in the human body, thus, the Logos simply put on
human flesh, in much the same way a man would put on a gorilla
suit, but his thinking would be totally that of a human, not a
gorilla. Thus, Apollinarius was denying the full humanity of Jesus,
and in 381 at the Council of Constantinople, Apollinarius’ teaching
was rejected, and the Council affirmed that Jesus was fully human,
thus our redemption is complete.
C. The third area of controversy to emerge was with a man named
Nestorius (unknown date of birth; death – 451). Nestorius taught
that the divine and human natures of Christ had a ‘moral union’,
versus a union of essence – that is, it was as though two different
people inhabited the body of Jesus, versus one unified,
divine/human nature. In 431 at the Council of Ephesus, Nestorius’
teaching was condemned, and it was affirmed that Christ was a
unified, not divided person.
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D. The fourth challenge to the nature of Christ came with a man
named Eutyches (378-454). He taught that the human nature of
Christ was completely absorbed in the divine, “as a drop of honey,
which falls into the sea, dissolves in it” (Bruce Shelley, Church
History in Plain Language [Dallas: Word Publishing, 1995], 113).
This meant that the human nature of Christ was completely lost,
and so too would be the redemption of mankind! Thus, at the
Council of Chalcedon in 451, Eutyches’ teaching was condemned
and it was affirmed that Christ was both fully human and fully
divine in one person.
E. The other important heresy that was also condemned at the Council
of Ephesus in 431 was that of a man named Pelagius (360-420).
Pelagius was a British monk who came to North Africa, and later
moved to Palestine. He advocated some rather aberrant teachings,
and Augustine aggressively repudiated them. The following are
the areas of emphasis in Pelagius’ teaching:
a. Adam was created liable to death, and would have died,
whether he had sinned or not.
b. The sin of Adam hurt himself only and not the entire human
race.
b. Infants at their birth are in the same state as Adam before the
fall.
c. Neither by the death nor fall of Adam does the whole race of
man die, nor by the resurrection of Christ rise again.
d. The Law introduces men into the kingdom of heaven, just in
the same way as the Gospel does. e. Even before the coming of Christ there were some men sinless.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/11604a.htm)
This is, without a doubt, one of the most blatant, works oriented
declarations of salvation that the early church encountered.
However, thanks in large part to Augustine, this heresy was
addressed, repudiated, and exposed for the express contradiction it
was and is to the scriptural truth about man’s nature and how man
can and may be saved.
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Session Four
IV. The Origin, History, and Beliefs of Islam
A. Introduction
This study is aimed at providing you, the reader and student, with
an overall perspective of Islam. Islam, without doubt, is the most
intensely anti-Christ religious system in the world today. The only
other belief systems that might eclipse its anti-Christ perspective are
Secular Humanism and Marxism. Therefore, the need for including
Islam as one of the major worldviews contending with the biblical
worldview is obvious to us today. Its oppression, terror, and
animalistic brutality practiced by its adherents places it in the same
category with the Nazis and the Marxists of totalitarian regimes such
as the former Soviet Union, as well as present day Cuba, North
Korea, and China. Thus, both in Communist countries and those
which are ruled and dominated by Islamic fundamentalists,
Christians are routinely persecuted, and the freedoms we so take for
granted (e.g., freedom of speech, the right to assemble, a free press
and freedom to worship openly) are either completely denied, or
seriously abridged.
Many today have tried to portray Islam as a ‘peaceful religion’.
However, in truth, Islam is anything but peaceful. Now to be sure,
there are peaceful Muslims the world over who want nothing to do
with the Islamic terrorists, or Islamic terrorism. But the religion
itself, as presented in the Quran and the Hadith, is one of violence,
oppression, and brutality toward those who don’t accept it, or agree
with it. This is especially true where and when Sharia, Islamic law,
is enacted as the law of the land. Testimonies abound of former
Muslims who have come to Christ and have actually risked their
lives by becoming a Christian and confessing Jesus as their Lord and
Savior. In fact, Sharia provides for and invokes a father or family
member to kill another family member who becomes a Christian,
and in those countries where Sharia is the ‘law of the land’, nothing
will be said or done to those who kill their Christian family member.
For us here in the United States, and in the Western civilized world
as a whole, the above act would be comparable to us killing a stray
dog or cat that was troubling our family. The difference is that here
in America, there are places that have more protection for a stray
animal and greater consequences for killing one, than there is
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protection for and consequences attending the persecution and
killing of a believer in Muslim countries.
Our approach to this study, therefore, is going to be threefold:
Origin, Beliefs & History. With regard to the Origin of Islam, we
will be taking an overview of Middle Eastern History in order to see
Islam in its proper context. In our analysis of the Beliefs of Islam,
we will do a rather in depth study, looking at not only the Quran and
Hadith, but also the writings of famous and leading Muslim Mullahs
and Imams (i.e., clerical leaders and scholars). In addition, where it
is appropriate and helpful, we will also be examining the Arabic
itself to get a better understanding of what is actually being taught
and believed. In the History section, we will be looking at the
spread of Islam over the centuries and how it has impacted the
peoples and cultures that have come under its influence and
dominance. We will also discuss the Crusades, the emergence and
rule of the Ottoman Empire and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and
how all of these events have contributed to the current Islamic
terrorism we are facing today.
I pray that God will greatly bless you as you pursue this study,
and that He will open up your heart and mind to His Word in a
greater capacity than ever before, while at the same time giving you
a hunger for the truth in His Word that will remain with you for the
rest of your life. Thus, as we pursue this study of Islam, we will be
doing it in tandem with the Bible in order to see the stark differences
between Islam and Christianity, and why.
As I said at the beginning of this introduction, Islam is the most
anti-Christ religious belief system in the world today. This study
will show in part why it is, and how we who are believers in Christ
can confront it, not only for our own benefit and understanding, but
also for the benefit and understanding of others. As has been said
before, there is absolutely NOTHING beneficial about being
ignorant and uninformed, and this is especially true regarding Islam.
So, may the Lord bless you and fill you with His wisdom as we enter
into this study, and may the Lord open your spiritual eyes to see “the
surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”
(Ephesians 2:7).
B. The Emergence of Islam in the Ancient Near East
Idolatry was the rule, not the exception in the Ancient Near East,
but Israel was the one nation that advocated monotheism, even
though so many of its people would fall away to idolatry at various
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times. And it was out of this idolatrous culture that the Arab peoples
emerged, of whom Mohammed was a descendant.
1. This, in essence, was the background out of which Islam emerged
in the 7th century AD, with one addition, and that was the
presence of Christianity. However, that presence was integral to
Islam’s development because at the very core of Islamic doctrine
and teaching is an absolutely antithetical view of salvation IN
EVERY WAY from that presented in the Gospels. In fact, one
might say that Islam is the quintessential embodiment of
antichrist teaching in the same way as we did with the teachings
of the ancient Sumerians and the proclamation of Nimrod
(Genesis 11:4), which we said was antigod/antichrist. Thus, from
the very beginning until now, Satan has ALWAYS had his
counterfeit to challenge the message and presentation of our true
God and Savior.
2. It is believed that Muhammad was born in Mecca in the year 570
AD (The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th
ed., vol. 22, s.v.
“Muhammad and the Religion of Islam,” 1). Muhammad’s father
died before he was born, and he was at first under the care of his
grandfather, and then, after both his mother and grandfather died,
his uncle assumed the responsibility of caring for and raising
Muhammad (Ibid.). Muhammad’s uncle was a merchant and
trader, and Muhammad would go along with him. On one such
trip to Syria around 595, Muhammad met a woman named
Khadijah, who was 40 years old (he was 25 at the time), and she
proposed marriage and Muhammad accepted. Muhammad did
not take another wife until after her death in 619 (Ibid.).
3. During these early years of Muhammad’s life, he observed what
he considered to be a selfish disregard of the poor of Mecca by
the wealthy merchants in favor of their own personal interests.
According to Islamic tradition, one day in 610 when Muhammad
was considering this situation of the poor and the wealthy, he had
a vision of an angelic being, who was supposed to be Gabriel,
and this angel is supposed to have said to him, “You are the
Messenger of God” (Ibid., 2). Thus, from that time until his
death in June, 632, Muhammad reportedly received messages at
various times from Gabriel, and the messages that were written
down were gathered together in 650 and formed what is called
the Quran. Therefore, according to Muslims, the Quran contains
the very words of God (Ibid.).
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4. The spread of Islam by Muhammad was carried out by use of the
sword. The one word that would characterize this spread would
be “razzias,” or raids (Ibid., 3). These raids included massacres
and assassinations, as well as outreaches to the poorest of the
Arabs (Ibid., 3-4). However, the following quote puts in
ultimate perspective the philosophy of Muhammad and that of
Islam:
In 632 Muhammad made his last visit to Mecca, and his speech
there has been recorded in the traditional writings as the final
statement of his message: “know that every Muslim is a
Muslim’s brother, and that the Muslims are brethren’: fighting
between them should be avoided, and the blood shed in pagan
times should not be avenged; Muslims should fight all men
until they say, ‘There is not god but God’.” (Albert Hourani, A
History of the Arab Peoples [Cambridge, MA: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1991], 19)
The spread of Islam was based on threat and intimidation, and
today, the exact same method is used to force people into
submission to their authority and belief where they are in power,
and this use of threat and intimidation is especially true for any
Muslim who might commit his or her life to Jesus Christ as their
Lord and Savior. On the other hand, from a cultural perspective,
Muhammad’s primary contribution is that he combined together
a union of Arab tribes that, after his death, resulted in the
ultimate creation of an Arab and Islamic Empire, stretching from
North Africa to Iran, and Islam became the glue that held that
Empire together. From that Empire created some thirteen
hundred years ago, we are today facing the same philosophy of
violence, threat, and brutality that was the cornerstone of Islam’s
spread with Muhammad, and subsequently, with that of his
followers as well, long ages after him.
C. The Beliefs of Islam
The beliefs of Islam are in essence antithetical to biblical truth in
every way. From the very outset, there is a full denial of the deity of
Jesus, and He is seen as no more than a prophet like Muhammad.
The following are some examples from the Quran concerning the
nature and person of Jesus:
1. Jesus is described as having a nature just like Adam’s, which
means that Jesus and Adam (i.e., man – you and me) are identical
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in nature: “The similitude of Jesus before Allah is as that of
Adam; He created him from dust, then said to him, ‘Be’: and he
was” (Surah 3:59). Abdullah Yusuf Ali makes the following
comment about this verse:
After a description of the high position which Jesus occupies as
a prophet, we have a repudiation of the dogma that he was
Allah, or the son of Allah, or anything more than a man. If it is
said that he was born without a human father, Adam was also
born without either a human father or mother. As far as our
physical bodies are concerned they are mere dust. In Allah’s
sight Jesus was as dust just as Adam was or humanity is. The
greatness of Jesus arose from the Divine command “Be”: for
after that he was – more than dust – a great spiritual leader and
teacher. (Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Quran,
9th
ed. [Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1997], 142)
The biblical account of Jesus’ nature is quite different from that
described in the Quran: “Therefore, He had to be made like His
brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people. For since He Himself was
tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the
aid of those who are tempted” (Hebrews 2:17-18). Indeed, He
was made like us as far as our human frailty is concerned, but He
was quite unlike us as far as the essence of His nature is
concerned:
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through
the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our
confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot
sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been
tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore
draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may
receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.
(Hebrews 4:14-16)
Jesus was tempted in all points as we are, but HE DID NOT SIN!
When we read Romans 3:23, we find a startling statement about
mankind: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
This “all” of course includes all mankind, except Jesus, because
He WAS NOT AND IS NOT LIKE ALL MEN! He was the
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unique, Son of God, born of the virgin Mary, Who is the only
One who can take our sins away.
2. The following Quranic verses deal with the denial of Jesus being
God:
In blasphemy indeed are those that say that Allah is Christ the
son of Mary (Surah 5:17a).
They do blaspheme who say: ‘Allah is Christ the son of Mary.’
But said Christ: ‘O Children of Israel! Worship Allah, my
Lord and your Lord.’ Whoever joins other gods with Allah –
Allah will forbid him the Garden, and the Fire will be his
abode. There will for the wrongdoers be no one to help (Surah
5:72).
And behold! Allah will say: ‘O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst
thou say unto men, ‘Worship me and my mother as gods in
derogation of Allah’?’ He will say: ‘Glory to Thee! Never
could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a
thing, Thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest
what is in my heart, though I know not what is in Thine. For
Thou knowest in full all that is hidden (Surah 5:116).
The Bible, on the other hand, clearly states the opposite of the
above verses:
Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to
a city in Galilee, called Nazareth, 27
to a virgin engaged to a
man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and
the virgin's name was Mary. 28
And coming in, he said to her,
"Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you." 29
But she was
greatly troubled at this statement, and kept pondering what
kind of salutation this might be. 30
And the angel said to her,
"Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. 31
"And behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son,
and you shall name Him Jesus. 32
"He will be great, and will be
called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give
Him the throne of His father David; 33
and He will reign over
the house of Jacob forever; and His kingdom will have no
end." 34
And Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I
am a virgin?" 35
And the angel answered and said to her, "The
Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy
offspring shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:26-35)
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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.
3
All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him
nothing came into being that has come into being. (John 1:1-3)
And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all
creation. 16
For by Him all things were created, both in the
heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created
by Him and for Him. 17
And He is before all things, and in Him
all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15-17)
Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham
was born, I am." 59
Therefore they picked up stones to throw at
Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the temple. (John
8:58-59)
I and the Father are one." 31
The Jews took up stones again to
stone Him. 32
Jesus answered them, "I showed you many good
works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?" 33
The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone
You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make
Yourself out to be God." 34
Jesus answered them, "Has it not
been written in your Law, 'I said, you are gods '? 35
"If he
called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the
Scripture cannot be broken), 36
do you say of Him, whom the
Father sanctified and sent into the world, 'You are
blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God '? 37
"If I do
not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; 38
but if I do
them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that
you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in
the Father." 39
Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him,
and He eluded their grasp. (John 10:30-39)
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in
many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has
spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things,
through whom also He made the world. 3 And He is the
radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His
nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When
He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand
of the Majesty on high; 4 having become as much better than
the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than
they. 5 For to which of the angels did He ever say, "Thou art
My Son, Today I have begotten Thee"? And again, "I will be a
Father to Him And He shall be a Son to Me"? 6 And when He
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again brings the first-born into the world, He says, "And let all
the angels of God worship Him. (Hebrews 1:1-6)
Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain, and
showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory; 9
and he said to Him, "All these things will I give You, if You
fall down and worship me." 10
Then Jesus said to him,
"Begone, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord
your God, and serve Him only. (Matthew 4:8-10)
The above verses clearly present the antithesis of what we read
and quoted from the Quran with regard to Jesus and His nature.
3. The Quran also teaches that Jesus was only a messenger and
nothing more:
O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion:
nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of
Mary was (no more than) a Messenger of Allah, and His Word,
which He bestowed on Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from
Him: so believe in Allah and His Messengers. (Surah 4:171a-b)
Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than a Messenger; many
were the Messengers that passed away before him. (Surah
5:75a)
After Jesus had risen from the dead, He appeared to His disciples,
but Thomas wasn’t there. Eight days passed from that first
encounter Jesus had with His disciples, and then He appeared
again and Thomas was there with the others at this appearance.
Thomas had initially doubted that the disciples had actually seen
Jesus, but when Jesus appears this time, He tells Thomas to
examine His hands and side where He had been pierced. Upon
doing that, and realizing that this was indeed the resurrected
Jesus, Thomas exclaimed: “My Lord and My God” (John 20:28)!
Thus, Jesus was far more than just a prophet.
4. The Quran also states that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross:
That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus the son of
Mary, the Messenger of Allah” – but they killed him not, nor
crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those
who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain)
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knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they
killed him not. (Surah 4:157)
This, therefore, is a complete denial of the atonement, and that
means that we are still in our sins, and we must atone for our own
sins by our own works! However, the above passage in John
20:28 attests not only to the fact of Jesus’ death and burial, but
also of His resurrection. Paul states very forcefully the
importance and necessity of Jesus’ death, burial, and
resurrection:
Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I
preached to you, which also you received, in which also you
stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word
which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I
delivered to you as of first importance what I also received,
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and
that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day
according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He appeared to Cephas,
then to the twelve. . . . Now if Christ is preached, that He has
been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that
there is no resurrection of the dead? 13
But if there is no
resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; 14
and
if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your
faith also is vain. 15
Moreover we are even found to be false
witnesses of God, because we witnessed against God that He
raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not
raised. 16
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has
been raised; 17
and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is
worthless; you are still in your sins. 18
Then those also who
have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19
If we have hoped
in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (I
Corinthians 15:1-5, 12-19)
Thus, we can see rather clearly that just on this one and all
crucial aspect of the deity of Christ and the atonement of our sins
through His death, burial, and resurrection, the Quran and the
Bible are the absolute antithesis of each other. And this is the
essence of that difference – salvation through the grace of God,
versus salvation through man’s works and his own supposed
righteousness. The latter, according to the Bible, is non-existent.
Consequently, the satanic deception of Islam is perpetuated
through a false sense of righteousness attained by one’s own
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works: “Those who believe (in the Quran), and those who follow
the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians – any
who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness,
shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear,
nor shall they grieve” (Surah 2:62). The Bible says just the
opposite with reference to our works:
For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse;
for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all
things written in the book of the law, to perform them." 11
Now
that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for,
"The righteous man shall live by faith." 12
However, the Law is
not of faith; on the contrary, "He who practices them shall live
by them." 13
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law,
having become a curse for us-- for it is written, "Cursed is
everyone who hangs on a tree "-- 14
in order that in Christ Jesus
the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (Galatians
3:10-14)
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the
surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I
have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish
in order that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not
having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but
that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which
comes from God on the basis of faith. (Philippians 3:8-9)
Sadly, I have NEVER talked to a Muslim who had any assurance
of eternal life after death, but only, “I hope my good works will
outweigh my bad works.” In relation to this, is the Muslim’s belief
that Satan was cast out of heaven because he refused to bow down
and worship Adam: “And behold, We said to the angels: ‘Bow down
to Adam,’ and they bowed down, not so Iblis. He refused and was
haughty, and he was of those who reject faith” (Surah 2:34). In
essence, Satan was commanded to “bow down” and give worship
and reverence to Adam, who is mankind. Thus, man, a created
being, was to be worshiped by the angels. That being the case, I, as
a man, can claim deity and the right to be worshiped by lesser
beings, and I am also my own savior. As we have already seen, this
too is the absolute opposite of the Bible: “For to which of the angels
did He ever say, ‘Thou art My Son, Today I have begotten Thee’?
And again, ‘I will be a Father to Him And He shall be a Son to Me’?
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6 And when He again brings the first-born into the world, He says,
‘And let all the angels of God worship Him’” (Hebrews 1:5-6).
Based on this passage in Hebrews, along with the above passage in
the Quran, Islam places man on the exact same level as Jesus, and
indeed, we each become our own Jesus.
However, in truth and reality, we are completely corrupt to the
core and utterly incapable of saving and redeeming ourselves. The
only hope, and the wonderful assurance we have in Christ is that our
sins are completely forgiven in Him. Jesus has and does completely
redeem us from our sin, but the satanic deception is very strong in
our lives as believers, and we must be equipping ourselves every day
in God’s complete armor:
Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. 11
Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm
against the schemes of the devil. 12
For our struggle is not against
flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against
the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of
wickedness in the heavenly places. 13
Therefore, take up the full
armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and
having done everything, to stand firm. 14
Stand firm therefore,
having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the
breastplate of righteousness, 15
and having shod your feet with the
preparation of the gospel of peace; 16
in addition to all, taking up
the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the
flaming missiles of the evil one. 17
And take the helmet of
salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18
With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with
this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for
all the saints, 19
and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given
to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness
the mystery of the gospel, 20
for which I am an ambassador in
chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to
speak. (Ephesians 6:10-20)
May the Lord cause all of us to walk wisely in Him and His truth.
May He cause us to be led by His Spirit and walk humbly before
Him. May He also cause us to walk in love before the Muslim and
any and all who do not have a saving relationship with Jesus:
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have
love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I
have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all
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knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but
do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions
to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not
have love, it profits me nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind, and
is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act
unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not
take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in
unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love
never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done
away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it
will be done away. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part;
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.
11
When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child,
reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish
things. 12
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face;
now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have
been fully known. 13
But now abide faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 13:1-13)
And the Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be
kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, 25
with gentleness
correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant
them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, 26
and they
may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil,
having been held captive by him to do his will. (II Timothy 2:24-
26)
D. The Five Pillars of Islam
The following is an excellent presentation of the Five Pillars of
Islam, which are the foundations for Islamic belief and practice.
One interesting thing to observe is that in the confession, which is
the first pillar, there is no mention of repentance and turning form
one’s sins and thereby receiving forgiveness of sins. It is in essence
an intellectual act, much the same as accepting any philosophical
position that one would prefer over another, versus coming to a life
changing and life transforming encounter with the true and living
God:
During the earliest decades after the death of the Prophet, certain
basic features of the religio-social organization of Islām were
singled out to serve as anchoring points of the community's life
and formulated as the “Pillars of Islām.” To these five, the
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Khawārij sect added a sixth pillar, the jihād, which, however, was
not accepted by the general community.
1. Shahadah – Profession of Faith
The first pillar is the profession of faith: “There is no deity but
God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God,” upon which
depends membership in the community. The profession of faith
must be recited at least once in one's lifetime, aloud, correctly, and
purposively, with an understanding of its meaning and with an
assent from the heart. From this fundamental belief are derived
beliefs in (1) angels (particularly Gabriel, the Angel of
Revelation), (2) the revealed Books (the Qur’ān and the sacred
books of Judaism and Christianity), (3) a series of prophets (among
whom figures of the Judeo-Christian tradition are particularly
eminent, although it is believed that God has sent messengers to
every nation), and (4) the Last Day (Day of Judgment).
2. Prayer
The second pillar consists of five daily canonical prayers. These
prayers may be offered individually if one is unable to go to the
mosque. The first prayer is performed before sunrise, the second
just after noon, the third in the late afternoon, the fourth
immediately after sunset, and the fifth before retiring to bed.
Before a prayer, ablutions, including the washing of hands, face,
and feet, are performed. The muezzin (one who gives the call for
prayer) chants aloud from a raised place (such as a tower) in the
mosque. When prayer starts, the imām, or leader (of the prayer),
stands in the front facing in the direction of Mecca, and the
congregation stands behind him in rows, following him in various
postures. Each prayer consists of two to four genuflection units
(rakah); each unit consists of a standing posture (during which
verses from the Qur’ān are recited—in certain prayers aloud, in
others silently), as well as a genuflection and two prostrations. At
every change in posture, “God is great” is recited. Tradition has
fixed the materials to be recited in each posture.
Special congregational prayers are offered on Friday instead of
the prayer just after noon. The Friday service consists of a sermon
(khubah), which partly consists of preaching in the local language
and partly of recitation of certain formulas in Arabic. In the
sermon, the preacher usually recites one or several verses of the
Qur’ān and builds his address on it, which can have a moral,
social, or political content. Friday sermons usually have
66
considerable impact on public opinion regarding both moral and
sociopolitical questions.
Although not ordained as an obligatory duty, nocturnal prayers
(called tahajjud) are encouraged, particularly during the latter half
of the night. During the month of Ramadān (see below Fasting),
lengthy prayers, called tarāwī, are offered congregationally before
retiring.
In strict doctrine, the five daily prayers cannot be waived even for
the sick, who may pray in bed and, if necessary, lying down. When
on a journey, the two afternoon prayers may be followed one by
the other; the sunset and late evening prayers may be combined as
well. In practice, however, much laxity has occurred, particularly
among the modernized classes, although Friday prayers are still
very well attended.
3. Zakat
The third pillar is the obligatory tax called zakāt (“purification,”
indicating that such a payment makes the rest of one's wealth
religiously and legally pure). This is the only permanent tax levied
by the Qur’ān and is payable annually on food grains, cattle, and
cash after one year's possession. The amount varies for different
categories. Thus, on grains and fruits it is 10 percent if land is
watered by rain, 5 percent if land is watered artificially. On cash
and precious metals it is 21/2 percent. Zakāt is collectable by the
state and is to be used primarily for the poor, but the Qur’ān
mentions other purposes: ransoming Muslim war captives,
redeeming chronic debts, paying tax collectors' fees, jihād (and by
extension, according to Qur’ān commentators, education and
health), and creating facilities for travellers.
After the breakup of Muslim religio-political power, payment of
zakāt became a matter of voluntary charity dependent on
individual conscience. In the modern Muslim world it has been left
up to the individual, except in some countries (such as Saudi
Arabia) where the Sharīah (Islāmic law) is strictly maintained.
4. Fasting
Fasting during the month of Ramadān (ninth month of the Muslim
lunar calendar), laid down in the Qur’ān (2:183–185), is the fourth
pillar of the faith. Fasting begins at daybreak and ends at sunset,
and during the day eating, drinking, and smoking are forbidden.
The Qur’ān (2:185) states that it was in the month of Ramadān that
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the Qur’ān was revealed. Another verse of the Qur’ān (97:1) states
that it was revealed “on the Night of Power,” which Muslims
generally observe on the night of 26–27 Ramadān. For a person
who is sick or on a journey, fasting may be postponed until
“another equal number of days.” The elderly and the incurably sick
are exempted through the daily feeding of one poor person if they
have the means.
5. Hajj
The fifth pillar is the annual pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca
prescribed for every Muslim once in a lifetime—“provided one can
afford it” and provided a person has enough provisions to leave for
his family in his absence. A special service is held in the Sacred
Mosque on the 7th of the month of Dhū al-hijjah (last in the
Muslim year). Pilgrimage activities begin by the 8th and conclude
on the 12th or 13th. All worshippers enter the state of ihrām; they
wear two seamless garments and avoid sexual intercourse, the
cutting of hair and nails, and certain other activities. Pilgrims from
outside Mecca assume ihrām at specified points en route to the
city. The principal activities consist of walking seven times around
the Kabbah, a shrine within the mosque; the kissing and touching
of the Black Stone (Hajar al-Aswad); and the ascent of and running
between Mount ‚afā and Mount Marwah (which are now,
however, mere elevations) seven times. At the second stage of the
ritual, the pilgrim proceeds from Mecca to Minā, a few miles
away; from there he goes to ‘Arafāt, where it is essential to hear a
sermon and to spend one afternoon. The last rites consist of
spending the night at Muzdalifah (between ‘Arafāt and Minā) and
offering sacrifice on the last day of ihrām, which is the ‘īd
(“festival”) of sacrifice.
Many countries have imposed restrictions on the number of
outgoing pilgrims because of foreign-exchange difficulties.
Because of the improvement of communications, however, the
total number of visitors has greatly increased in recent years. By
the early 1990s the number of visitors was estimated to be about
two million, approximately half of them from non-Arab countries.
All Muslim countries send official delegations on the occasion,
which is being increasingly used for religio-political congresses.
At other times in the year, it is considered meritorious to perform
the lesser pilgrimage (‘umrah), which is not, however, a substitute
for the hajj pilgrimage. ("Islām." Encyclopædia Britannica.
Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica,
2008)
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6. Jihad
Jihad, also spelled jehad (“struggle,” or “battle”), a religious
duty imposed on Muslims to spread Islam by waging war; jihad
has come to denote any conflict waged for principle or belief and is
often translated to mean “holy war.”
Islam distinguishes four ways by which the duty of jihad can be
fulfilled: by the heart, the tongue, the hand, and the sword. The
first consists in a spiritual purification of one's own heart by doing
battle with the devil and overcoming his inducements to evil. The
propagation of Islam through the tongue and hand is accomplished
in large measure by supporting what is right and correcting what is
wrong. The fourth way to fulfill one's duty is to wage war
physically against unbelievers and enemies of the Islamic faith.
Those who professed belief in a divine revelation—Christians and
Jews in particular—were given special consideration. They could
either embrace Islam or at least submit themselves to Islamic rule
and pay a poll and land tax. If both options were rejected, jihad
was declared.
Modern Islam places special emphasis on waging war with one's
inner self. It sanctions war with other nations only as a defensive
measure when the faith is in danger.
Throughout Islamic history, wars against non-Muslims, even
though with political overtones, were termed jihads to reflect their
religious flavour. This was especially true in the 18th and 19th
centuries in Muslim Africa south of Sahara, where religiopolitical
conquests were seen as jihads, most notably the jihad of Usman
dan Fodio, which established the Sokoto caliphate (1804) in what
is now northern Nigeria. The Afghan War in the late 20th and early
21st centuries was also viewed by many of its participants as a
jihad, first against the Soviet Union and Afghanistan's Marxist
government and, later, against the United States. During that time,
Islamic extremists used the theory of jihad to justify violent attacks
against Muslims whom the extremists accused of apostasy (Arabic
riddah). ("jihad." Encyclopædia Britannica. Ultimate Reference
Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008)
69
Session Five
V. The Crusades
The Crusades are an important part of the history of West and East,
as well as an important aspect of our very lives and existence today.
We are going to look at seven of the major crusades, plus the Children’s
Crusade.
A. The First Crusade was from 1095-1099, and it was the most
successful from the Christian point of view. Peter the Hermit led the
first one in 1096, and in 1099 the Christians recaptured Jerusalem
from the Muslims. In addition, there was a long strip of land on the
Palestinian, Mediterranean Coast that the Crusaders captured and
held until 1291, and they referred to it as the Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem.
B. The Second Crusade was from 1147-1149, and it ended in defeat for
the Christian forces. However, what is important is the possible
reason for the defeat. The Church needed money for supporting
legates in the Holy Land, as well as other needs, thus, through Pope
Urban II (1088-1099), a means of acquiring the necessary monetary
funds was hatched. During the Middle Ages, for one’s sins to be
forgiven, one must confess those sins before a priest. Upon hearing
the confession, the priest would then pronounce the sins forgiven,
but then the individual would need to perform some act to assure
that his repentance was sincere. However, if the penitent died before
performing this act, he would then go to purgatory where penance
for his sins would be enacted through what was termed “temporal”
punishment. Up until this point, the Church had claimed the
authority to remit part of this punishment on earth of an individual
who was in purgatory, but Urban II now declared total forgiveness
of sins by the Church on earth of any Crusader who went to fight in
the Holy Land out of true sincerity. However, if one could not go
and fight in the Crusades himself, then he could financially support
someone else who would, thus, two parties could now be promised
complete remission of their sins – the one going to fight and the one
supporting him financially. The result of this new “indulgence” was
a great increase of funds to the Church for many new building
projects, etc. Unfortunately, however, this did not bring military
victory for the Second Crusade (Shelley, 189-190).
C. The Third Crusade went from 1189-1192. The new Sultan of Egypt,
Saladin, became a powerful new leader for the Muslims. He and his
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forces recaptured Jerusalem, and the Third Crusade was called for to
recapture it by Christian forces. The leaders of this Third Crusade
were three of Europe’s most powerful kings – Frederick Barbarossa
of Germany, Richard the Lion-Hearted of England (of Robin Hood
fame), and Philip Augustus of France. Unfortunately, this tri-part
alliance didn’t last – Frederick was drowned in Asia Minor, and
Philip’s ill health and disagreements with Richard led to his return
to France. That left Richard to face Saladin by himself. The
Crusaders under Richard had recaptured Acre on the Mediterranean
coast on July 31, 1191, but they could not recapture Jerusalem.
Saladin, on the other hand, had proclaimed a jihad against the
Christians (we are now very familiar with that), but he also held out
the olive branch for a negotiated peace. At one point, Saladin
offered his sister in marriage to Richard, and he would in turn give
him Palestine as a wedding present. Richard turned that offer down,
but they did reach an agreement on September 2, 1192, which
involved a five year truce and free passage for Christians to the Holy
Land (William R. Cannon, History of Christianity in the Middle
Ages [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960], 209-212; Shelley, 190).
D. The Fourth Crusade was from 1199-1204, and without question, this
was the absolute nadir of the Crusades from the Christian
perspective. Innocent III had become Pope (1198-1216), and he
tried to revive the Crusades once again. However, those who were
willing and desirous to go could not afford the shipping costs of the
Venetian merchants. The Venetian merchants then concocted a
plan, and they offered to subsidize the costs for shipping the
Crusaders to the Holy Land if they would first attack their trading
competitor, the Christian town of Zara (which is now Zadar off the
coast of Yugoslavia), on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. This
was done in 1202, but Pope Innocent III rebuked all who
participated in that attack by excommunicating them. However, the
Venetians were not moved by the excommunication, and they next
persuaded the Crusaders to attack Constantinople, and they did in
1204, conquered the city, and set up the Latin Empire of
Constantinople. Two things emerged from this ill-fated Crusade: the
first is that the Crusaders never made it to the Holy Land; secondly,
Innocent III once again soundly rebuked those who did this, but he
also set up a Roman archbishop in Constantinople, thus, bringing the
center of the Eastern Church once again under Roman authority and
domination. This Latin Kingdom of Constantinople lasted until
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1261, but Constantinople never fully recovered, and all of this even
further widened the separation between the Western and Eastern
Church (Shelley, 190-191).
E. The Children’s Crusade of 1212 was the most tragic of all the
Crusading efforts. The children who went did so unarmed, as their
intention was to lead the Muslims to faith in Christ by their example.
The leader of this Crusade was a boy named Stephen from the town
of Cloyes, France. In 1212, he came to Paris with a story that Christ
had met him in a field and told him to go tell the King of France that
he was to lead a Children’s Crusade to the Holy Land, and he would
succeed where the armed warriors had failed. Stephen was hailed as
a ‘prophet’, and children flocked to him from all over Europe. In
Germany a young man named Nicholas was also calling for a
Children’s Crusade. By the end of June, 1212, it is estimated that
ca. 9000 children were committed to following him. Stephen and
his followers went to Marseilles, France, a port city. There, two
men, Hugh Ferreus and William Posqueres, offered to carry the
children to the Holy Land, as they owned their own ships. Seven
ships were used to transport the children, but on the way, a storm
arose, and two of the ships were blown onto the island of Recluse,
where all the children on those ships were drowned. The remaining
ships were then taken to the North African cities of Bougie and
Alexandria, where the children were sold into slavery at the slave
markets. The other young German boy, Nicholas, led another group
of about 7000 children and young women with babies over the Alps
into Italy. A number of them died crossing the Alps, and when they
arrived in Geno, Italy on August 25, 1212, they asked if they could
rest for a week. However, they were only allowed to rest for a day,
and they then set out for Rome, and ended up in the port city of
Brindisi, in the southeast tip of Italy. In Brindisi, the visionary
youth met unmitigated horror as their Crusade ended up in total
disarray. No merchants or shipowners offered to take them to the
Holy Land. However, a Norwegian merchant named Frisco took
control of them and sold the girls into brothels and the boys into
slave markets (Robert Payne, The Dream and the Tomb [New York:
Dorset Press, 1984], 287-289).
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F. The Fifth Crusade was from 1217-1221, and it ended up being the
largest force since the Third Crusade. It is estimated that between
5,000 to 15,000 knights and as many as 60,000 foot soldiers began
this Crusade. Initially, in February of 1219, the Muslims offered
peace terms, which included the giving up of Jerusalem, but
Cardinal Pelagius refused the offer, hoping instead to utterly defeat
the Muslims and take over Cairo. However, in July of 1221, as the
Crusaders were advancing toward the gates of Cairo, the Sultan of
Egypt, Al-Kamil, opened up the flood gates of the Nile, and the
entire area was flooded. This in turn forced the Crusaders to come
to a truce once again, without having retaken Jerusalem
(Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 16, 15th
ed., “Crusades” [Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1989], 835-836; Payne, 300-301; Schaff, vol.
5, 278-279; http://members.tznet.com/donjuan/fifth.htm).
G. The Sixth Crusade was from 1228-1229, and it did not involve any
major military conflict, but rather negation. The Sultan of Egypt,
who was being threatened by fellow Muslims, reached a negotiated
peace with Frederick II in 1229:
The treaty of 1229 is unique in the history of the Crusades. By
diplomacy alone and without major military confrontation, Jerusalem,
Bethlehem, and a corridor running to the sea were ceded to the
kingdom of Jerusalem. Exception was made for the Temple area, the
Dome of the Rock, and the Aqṣā Mosque, which the Muslims retained.
Moreover, all current Muslim residents of the city would retain their
homes and property. They would also have their own city officials to
administer a separate justice system and safeguard their religious
interests. The walls of Jerusalem, which had already been destroyed,
were not rebuilt, and the peace was to last for 10 years. (Encyclopedia
Britannica, ibid., 836)
H. The Seventh Crusade was from 1248-1254, and it was led by King
Louis IX of France. Louis was a very committed Christian who saw
the Crusade as God’s calling on his life. From September, 1248-
February, 1250, the Crusaders enjoyed victory. However, the
Egyptian Muslims succeeded in surrounding and capturing Louis
and holding him for ransom. Then, on May 6, 1250, he was released
and the city of Damietta on the northeastern shores of coastline of
Egypt was surrendered back to the Muslims. However, Louis
remained on for four more years in the shoreline Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem in Palestine (which, didn’t include Jerusalem at this time),
and he bargained for the release of more prisoners, as well as
73
fortified some positions in the Kingdom (Encycloopedia Britannica,
ibid., 837).
I. The final defeat of the Crusaders occurred in 1291 as Acre, the last
remaining fortification of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, ended up
falling to the Muslims on May 18, 1291. With this collapse, the
formal period of the Crusades ended. However, with the fall and
capture of Constantinople to the Seljuk Turks of the Ottoman
Empire on May 29, 1453, a new era of Middle Eastern and European
History began:
In 1452, Sultan Mehmed II (sometimes Muhammad II) began
preparations for conquering the city. He constructed a fortress at the
narrow point of the Bosporus, assembled a large and experienced army
and arranged the neutrality of Hungary and Venice (likely allies of the
Byzantines). A 54-day siege began in April 1453. The walled city was
bombarded almost constantly from Ottoman cannons on both land and
sea. The walls were breached on May 29; Emperor Constantine XI
died amidst his Genoese supporters and fellow townspeople. Two days
of looting, murder and rape followed before order was restored by the
sultan, soon to be known as Mehmed the Conqueror.
(http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1046.html)
74
Session Six
VI. The Reformation
A. The prelude to the Reformation involved many issues, chief of
which was the overall corruption of the hierarchy of the Roman
Catholic Church, along with a host of teachings that had no biblical
foundation, but rather were founded on tradition and the rulings of
the Catholic hierarchy. However, there were some important
individuals and events that were pivotal to October 31, 1517 when
Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in
Wittenberg.
B. In 1305, the College of Cardinals elected Clement V to the Papal
throne, and rather than moving to Rome, he chose to remain in
Avignon, France as a Frenchman. For the next 72 years, the
following six Popes, who were also French, also chose to remain in
Avignon. This 72 year period has come to be called the
‘Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy’ (Shelley, 219). The result of
this action caused resentment from other European countries, and
this was especially true for Germany. In 1324, there was a move by
German king, Louis IV (1314-1347), against Pope John XXII
(1316-1334). In addition, a scholar named Marsilius of Padua not
only criticized the Avignon Papacy in particular, but the whole of
the governmental structure of the Roman Catholic Church.
Marsilius had been the Rector of the University of Paris from 1312-
1314, and he also served as a political consultant to a group in Italy
who were pro-king and anti-pope as far as the primary direction of
their loyalty from an Italian citizen’s perspective. Between 1320-
1324, he wrote a book while in Paris entitled, Defender of the
Peace, in which he was very critical of the Papacy and its political
intrusion into the affairs of European monarchs and the leadership
of their countries, and he also called for a democratic form of church
government within the Roman Catholic Church (Encyclopædia
Britannica, Ultimate Reference Suite, “Marsilius Of
Padua,” Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008.). In many ways
this book was a powerful prelude to the Reformation that would
come within the next 100 years:
Defender of the Peace asserted that the church was the community of
all believers and that the priesthood was not superior to the laity.
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Neither popes nor bishops nor priests had received any special
function from Christ; they served only as agents of the community of
believers, which was represented by the general council. (Shelley,
219-220)
In 1326, Marsilius and a man named John of Jandun, a French
philosopher and Aristoltelian, presented this work to Louis IV of
Bavaria, and the result was that both men had to flee Paris to Louis
for protection. In 1327, both men were condemned as heretics and
were excommunicated from the Catholic Church (Encyclopædia
Britannica, Ultimate Reference Suite, ibid.). Marsilius’ work was
the first of a series of critical works beginning in the 14th century and
leading up to the 95 Theses of Luther in the early 15th
century that
would come out challenging the overall structure and focus of the
Roman Catholic Church.
C. The next major event to occur in the 14th
century was centered
around John Wyclif (1330-1384). In 1372, Wyclif received his
doctorate form Oxford and became a leading professor at the
University. At this time in Europe, the issue of “dominion,” or
“lordship,” that is, the reality of human authority being exercised
over others, was the pressing issue among monarchs and church
leaders (Shelley, p. 225). The Roman Catholic Church’s position
was that it was the only valid dispenser of authority to secular
monarchs and rulers. In essence, “God had entrusted the pope with
the universal dominion over all temporal things and persons. Any
authority exercised by sinful rulers was unlawful” (Ibid.). On the
other hand, certain scholars insisted that human authority “depended
less on the mediation of the church than on the fact that its possessor
was in a state of grace, that is, he had committed no grievous sin”
(Ibid.). However, Wyclif and one of his former professors, Richard
Fitzralph, insisted that being in “a state of grace” was not only
required for secular rulers to legitimately rule, but it was also should
be required for a church leader to legitimately rule as well. Wyclif,
however, went even further by saying that the English government
had the divinely sanctioned authority “to correct the abuses of the
church within its realm and to relieve of office those churchmen who
persisted in their sin. The state could even seize the property of
corrupt church officials” (Ibid., p. 226). In addition to his view of
the overall authority of the church in relation to the state, Wyclif
also believed that every man, be he priest or laymen, had equal
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access to God and was equal before God, and a man’s relationship to
God was the basis of his character, as well as the basis for either
church or secular office. Thus, Wyclif consistently opposed the
political pursuit of the papacy to dominate the European states,
versus the papacy being an example of Christian character and
service, and he went so far to say that the pope was the Antichrist:
As for the papacy, no one has used more stinging words against
individual popes as well as against the papacy as an institution than
did Wyclif. In the treatises of his last years and in his sermons, the
pope is stigmatized as anti-Christ. His very last work, on which he
was engaged when death overtook him, bore the title, Anti-christ,
meaning the pope. He went so far as to call him the head-vicar of
the fiend. He saw in the papacy the revelation of the man of sin.
The office is wholly poisonous—totum papale officium
venenosum. He heaped ridicule upon the address “most holie
fadir.” The pope is neither necessary to the Church nor is he
infallible. If both popes and all their cardinals were cast into hell,
believers could be saved as well without them. They were created
not by Christ but by the devil. The pope has no exclusive right to
declare what the Scriptures teach, or proclaim what is the supreme
law. His absolutions are of no avail unless Christ has absolved
before. Popes have no more right to excommunicate than devils
have to curse. Many of them are damned—multi papae sunt
dampnati. (Schaff, vol. 6, 332)
Wyclif is known best in Protestant circles today for his emphasis on
making the Word of God available in the language of the people, as
well as his view of the preeminence of Scripture over tradition and
the final arbiter in all matters of faith and doctrine:
Wyclif’s chief service for his people, next to the legacy of his own
personality, was his assertion of the supreme authority of the Bible
for clergy and laymen alike and his gift to them of the Bible in
their own tongue. His statements, setting forth the Scriptures as the
clear and sufficient manual of salvation and insisting that the literal
sense gives their plain meaning, were as positive and unmistakable
as any made by Luther. In his treatise on the value and authority of
the Scriptures, with 1000 printed pages, f602 more is said about the
Bible as the Church’s appointed guide-book than was said by all
the mediaeval theologians together. And none of the Schoolmen,
from Anselm and Abaelard to Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus,
exalted it to such a position of preëminence as did he. With one
accord they limited its authority by coördinating with its contents
tradition, that is, the teachings of the Church. This man, with
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unexcelled precision and cogency, affirmed its final jurisdiction, as
the law of God, above all authorities, papal, decretist or patristic.
What Wyclif asserts in this special treatise, he said over again in
almost every one of his works, English and Latin. If possible, he
grew more emphatic as his last years went on, and his Opus
evangelicum (Gospel Work), probably his very last writing,
abounds in the most positive statements language is capable of.
(Ibid., 338)
However, that which separated him from the Roman Catholic
leadership, and which caused his expulsion from Oxford in 1382,
was his repudiation of the doctrine of Transubstantiation:
In his treatise on the eucharist, he praised God that he had been
delivered from its laughable and scandalous errors. The dogma of
the transmutation of the elements he pronounced idolatry, a lying
fable. His own view is that of the spiritual presence. Christ’s body,
so far as its dimensions are concerned, is in heaven. It is
efficaciously or virtually in the host as in a symbol. This symbol
“represents” — vicarius est — the body.
Neither by way of implantation nor of identification, much less
by way of transmutation, is the body in the host. Christ is in the
bread as a king is in all parts of his dominions and as the soul is in
the body. In the breaking of the bread, the body is no more broken
than the sunbeam is broken when a piece of glass is shattered:
Christ is there sacramentally, spiritually, efficiently —
sacramentaliter, spiritualiter et virtualiter. Transubstantiation is
the greatest of all heresies and subversive of logic, grammar and all
natural science. (Ibid., 336)
However, prior to Wyclif’s expulsion from Oxford, he had reached
out to the common people in order to provide for them an English
translation of the Latin Vulgate. This resulted in a revival among
the common people who would go out and share the Gospel with
any and all who would listen. Their critics called them “Lollards,
meaning ‘mumblers’” (Shelley, 230).
D. John Huss (1369-1415) was born and raised in Czechoslovakia,
and he studied and graduated from the University of Prague,
receiving a BA in 1394 and a MA in 1396, after which he began
teaching at the University, and in 1401, he was appointed Dean of
the Philosophy Department (“Hus, Jan,” Encyclopædia Britannica,
Ultimate Reference Suite [Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica,
2008]). In 1402, Hus was appointed to the pulpit of the Bethlehem
Chapel in Prague, and from this pulpit, Hus was able to disseminate
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his reform views with regard to the organization of the church along
the same line as that of Wyclif. Interestingly, however, he did not
deny the doctrine of transubstantiation, which Wyclif did, and
Wyclif maintained the doctrine of purgatory. However, Hus’
primary focus was on moral reform of the leadership and practices
of the church, such as simony, which he utterly condemned:
Hus's theological views regarding the nature of the Church, the
practice of the sacramental life, the headship of Christ, and the role
and exercise of authority in the Church all flowed from his passion
for the moral reform of the Church, especially among the clergy
and hierarchy. Though he demonstrated a familiarity with canon
law, Hus insisted that the Scriptures and the early centuries of the
Christian community, not later tradition and papal decrees,
determine the nature of the Church. (Daniel Didomizio, “Jan Hus's
De Ecclesia, Precursor of Vatican Ii?”, Theological Studies.
Volume: 60. Issue: 2. [1999]: 247)
During this same time, just subsequent to what has been called the
‘Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy’ (1305-1377), there emerged
the ‘Great Papal Schism’, which lasted from 1378-1417. In 1377,
Pope Gregory XI (Pope from 1370-1378) returned to Rome, and
there was great excitement and elation over the papacy returning to
Rome. However, he died the next year, and new Pope, Urban VI
(Pope from 1378-1389), an Italian, was elected on April 18, 1378.
However, by the summer of 1378, the French Cardinals were very
displeased with him and announced that he was an apostate, and
they moved to vote in another Pope in August of 1378 who was
French, Clement VII (1378-1394), and the papacy was once again
moved to Avignon, France. Thus began the ‘Great Papal Schism’,
which lasted until 1417. However, in 1409 a group of Cardinals
from both the Roman and Avignon parties met in a general council
in Pisa, Italy and decided that the division had gone on long enough.
By that time, Rome had already had three other Popes since Urban
VI (Boniface IX [1389-1404]; Innocent VII [1404-1406]; & Gregory
XII [1406-1415]), and Avignon had one other since Clement VII
(Benedict XIII [1394-1417]). Thus, the Council of Pisa deposed
both Gregory XII of Rome and Benedict XIII of Avignon and
elected a third Pope, Alexander V (1409-1410). Alexander V died
the following year, and John XXIII succeeded him (1410-1415).
However, neither of the other two Popes stepped down, thus, from
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1410-1415, there actually existed three Popes who claimed to be the
true and rightful Pope: Gregory XII in Rome; Benedict XIII in
Avignon; & John XXIII in Pisa. It was during this incredible time
of upheaval in the Roman Catholic Church that John Hus came on
the scene. Hus took a strong stand against the sale of indulgences,
or simony for the purposes of what he considered to be ungodly
pursuits, and during this ‘Schism’, and it was this opposition that
ultimately cost him his life. In 1412, John XXIII of Pisa sold
indulgences to support his campaign against Gregory XII of Rome,
and Hus vehemently and publically denounced these indulgences,
which the king of Czechoslovakia also received part of.
Consequently, Hus lost the king’s support (“Hus, Jan,” Ibid.). In
1414, the German King, Sigismund (king from 1411-1437),
encouraged Pope John XXIII to call a Council at Constance,
Germany. This Council, which lasted from 1414-1418, ultimately
succeeded in getting Gregory XII to abdicate, and deposed John
XXIII and Benedict XIII (however, he never consented to the
Council’s decision, and he moved to Peniscola, Spain where he died
in 1422/23), and then elected Martin V as Pope (Pope from 1417-
1431). It was during the Council of Constance that Hus was
summoned to come, with the promise of ‘safe-conduct’, to present
his views. However, once Hus arrived, he was arrested, placed in
confinement, and ultimately condemned as a heretic and burned at
the stake on July 6, 1415. The following is an account of Hus’ last
moments on this earth:
Huss was first tied round the middle with cords. A chain was
passed over these, and chains were fastened to his left leg and his
neck. Thus securely bound to the stake, the faggots provided for
the occasion were piled to the chin; straw was placed beneath and
between them where it was thought likely most effectually to
contribute to the fierceness of the blaze. A moment of awful
expectation followed. The executioner approached with a lighted
torch; when the Duke of Bavaria rode up to Huss, and loudly
called to him, demanding that he should now renounce his errors;
at the same time reminding him that in a few moments it would be
out of his power to do so. "I thought the danger already passed" he
replied; "but happily, I am nothing tempted to gainsay what I have
advanced. I have taught the truth, and am now ready to seal it with
my blood. Ultimately it shall prevail, though I may not see it. This
day you kindle the flames of persecution about a poor and
worthless sinner; but the spirit which animates me, shall, phoenix-
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like, ascend from my ashes, soar majestically on high through
many succeeding ages, and prove to all the Christian world, how
vain this persecution, how impotent your rage." The martyr turned
as far as his bands would admit, and looked towards the
executioner, who now approached to kindle the fire. His
movements caused some of the outer faggots to fall. Upon this, the
flaming torch was laid down, till the wood could be replaced. The
Bohemian saw the torch resumed, and in the same instant he heard
the crackling of the lighted straw. The rapidly extending blaze
spread round the pile; while, seizing the last moments that
remained to him on earth, Huss was heard to sing out in prayer,
"Christ, Thou Son of the living God, have mercy on me." He was
proceeding, when the rising flames seized his beard, eyes and
eyebrows, and an involuntary start threw the cap from his head.
His voice was again heard above the roaring of the volume of fire,
which now burst from the top of the pile behind the stake.
Utterance failed him; but his uplifted eyes evinced (showed), in
that awful moment, that his heart was still awake to devotion,
though his tongue was mute forever. His face became violently
distorted, and bowing down his head he was seen to expire.
Enough wood hand not been provided, and the fire failed before
the mortal remains of the martyr were more than half consumed.
His clothes had been thrown on the pile in aid of the faggots; but
all was insufficient, and a new supply of wood was necessary. The
burning being completed, carried away in a cart, and thrown into a
neighboring river, that the admirers of the Bohemian might possess
nothing to recall the memory of their martyr. The council had
stated that it had done nothing more pleasing to God than to punish
the Bohemian heretic. Huss was judged an heretic because he
believed in the authority of the Bible above the pope and Canon
Law. He believed that Salvation from sin was by Grace through
Faith in Christ Jesus alone. The council never dreamed that the fire
it lighted under Huss in Constance that day would burst into a
mighty conflagration that was to sweep inexorably over the whole
world with the true Gospel of Christ. (http://www.logosresourcepages.org/History/huss_b.htm)
E. Martin Luther (November 10, 1483-February 18, 1546) is
unequivocally the personification of the Protestant Reformation.
This one man’s life has influenced the world up to our very day, and
his influence has touched billions of people over the past 500 years
in either a direct, or indirect manner. And yet, what God did in and
through Luther came at a very high cost to Luther, and so it is with
every person through whom God ministers His grace, truth, and
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righteousness to a dark, self-destructive, and sin-permeated world in
order to bring about His life, light, and eternal, liberating salvation.
1. Luther came from peasant stock, and he was very proud of
that fact. In fact, his father began as a miner and later moved to
Mansfeldt where, because of his character and work ethic, he
ultimately was able “to establish at Mansfeldt two smelting
furnaces. His integrity and moral worth were speedily recognized
by his fellow-townsmen, who promoted him to several
magisterial offices” (W. Carlos Martin, The Life and Times of
Martin Luther [New York: American Tract Society, 1866;
reprint, Albany, OR: Ages Software, 1997;], 26 [page number is
reprint edition]). The following are two quotes in German, one
by Luther and the other by a commentator on Luther, with regard
to Luther’s early family life:
Ich bin eines Bauern Sohn; mein Vater, Grossvater, Ahnherr sind
rechte Bauern gewest. Darauf ist mein Vater gen Mansfeld
gezogen und ein Berghauer worden: daher bin ich.” Mathesius
wisely remarks with reference to the small beginnings of Luther:
“Wass gross soll werden, muss klein angehen; und wenn die
Kinder zärtlich und herrlich erzogen werden, schadet es ihnen ihr
Leben lang. (translation – “I am a peasant’s son; my Father,
Grandfather, Forefathers were genuine peasants. Thus, my
Father had a strong attraction toward Mansfeld and became a
miner; from there, I am.” Mathesius wisely remarks with
reference to the small beginnings of Luther: “That which should
become great, must begin small; and if the children are brought
up tenderly and magnificently, it is harmful to their life for a long
time”). (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7,
2nd
edition, reprint [Grand Rapids: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1985] 103, footnote 3)
In addition, Luther talks about the stern discipline of his
upbringing, but apparently rather than rejecting such discipline
and his parents who administered it, he greatly admired and
appreciated them:
Luther was deeply devoted to both Hans and Hannah, and he
desired that they approve of his controversial career. Later in his
life, when writing On Monastic Vows, Martin dedicated the book
to his father. He wrote that his father’s earlier rebuke about
honoring parents had been right: “You quickly came back with a
reply so fitting and so much to the point that I have scarcely in
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my life heard any man say anything that struck me so forcibly
and stayed with me so long.”
On his way to the ecclesiastical hearing at Augsburg, when he
feared the heretic’s stake lay ahead, Luther’s thoughts turned to
the welfare of his mother and father. “Now I must die,” he said.
“What a disgrace I shall be to my parents!” (Paul Thigpen, “The
Parents Luther Feared Disgracing” Christian History, 34 [1992]:
11)
In addition, the very times Luther was living in were quite harsh
and unrelenting:
Luther lived in exciting times, the era of Machiavelli,
Michelangelo, Raphael, Copernicus, and Columbus. Even today,
the splendor of life at a Renaissance court excites the
imagination.
However, the young man and his family were utterly
untouched by the era’s larger events. Not a single Luder was
aware of Columbus’s voyages. None knew of the glories of
Renaissance art and literature until much later. Instead, they
endured the harsh realities of life in northern Europe, where
violence was part of everyday life.
A local drought, a terribly wet spring, or an early frost could
force grain prices up as much as 150 per cent over the previous
year. Many people were reduced to begging for food.
Peasants often sought recourse for grievances not in the courts
but with fists, knives, and clubs. Beggars and the homeless—
which included many maimed, insane, and mentally retarded—
were so numerous that authorities on the west bank of the Rhine
would periodically round them up and drive them over to the east
bank. From there, other soldiers would march them deep into the
Black Forest and on to central Germany.
The Plague stalked Europe at the time. In Strasbourg, to take
one local example, it took the lives of 16,000 of the 25,000
inhabitants and left deserted 300 villages in the region.
If this was an age of death, it was also an age of pilgrimages,
saints, and relics. The search for spiritual security colored
everything. Christ was often pictured on a throne with a lily
(resurrection) coming from one side of his head and a sword
(damnation) coming from the other. The burning question was,
“How can I avoid the sword and earn the lily?” (Ibid., 13)
As a result of this brief overview of Luther’s early years, you can
see some of the things that were part of the development of his
personality and character that God used to form the nature of
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Christ within him in order that he might become the man in
Christ he would have to be for the work God intended to do in
and through him.
2. Luther’s father wanted Martin to go into the field of law, and
that was the direction Martin’s education was taking him. In
1502, he received his BA, and he continued his studies toward a
law degree, but his heart was not really in it:
Although, in obedience to his father’s wish, Martin devoted
himself assiduously to the study of the civil law, his heart
was never in it. He infinitely preferred the belles-lettres and
music. Of music he did not hesitate to say, that to him it appeared
the first of the arts after theology. “Music,” he affirmed, “is the
art of the prophets; it is the only other art which, like theology,
can calm the agitations of the soul and put the devil to flight.” . . .
. This inclination to music and literature, the assiduous
cultivation of the arts, which he alternated with the study of logic
and the law, presented no indication that he was so soon to play
the chief part in contemporaneous religious history. (Martin
1997, 31)
However, that which powerfully and sovereignly affected his life
was his discovery of a Latin Bible in the library as he was
combing through the stacks one day:
One day — he was then in his twentieth year, and had been at the
university two years — while engaged as usual in glancing over
the library manuscripts, he chanced to open an old volume,
moldy and cobwebbed. Attracted by its antique aspect, Luther
read its title, and found it to be a Latin Bible, the first he had ever
seen. This he read and reread with inexpressible and never-
ceasing delight, mingled with some astonishment, for until then
he had imagined that the fragments of Scripture contained in
the various collects of the Roman ritual embraced the whole
word of God. Thus in an obscure corner of a neglected library,
locked up in the Latin text, was discovered to Martin Luther that
book which he was so instrumental in restoring to its pristine
dignity, purity, and authority, and which he did so much to
popularize by that admirable German translation in which his
countrymen still read the oracles of God. (Ibid., 32)
Thus, in this simple act of what would appear to men as an
unplanned, incidental occurrence, the course of history was
changed. Luther found the Word of God in its entirety, and as he
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began to read it, that reading set in motion a deeper work of
God’s Spirit upon his mind, which in turn resulted in his
conversion some twenty years later, and that resulted a few years
later in the beginning date of the Protestant Reformation –
October 31, 1517 – when Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the
church door in Wittenburg, Germany.
3. In the spring of 1505, Luther received his MA from Erfurt
University, and he was on his way to becoming a lawyer, which
was his parent’s dream. But on July 2, 1505, he encountered a
severe lightening and thunder storm that not only changed
Luther’s course in life, but also the history of the Church and the
world (http://www.luther.de/en/blitz.html): Luther’s life was full of startling and unexpected crises, and the first and
most startling of them all came in the summer of 1505, after he had been
a law-student for only a few weeks. He had just been home for a brief
visit. His progress in his work had been all that could be desired, and his
parents' pride and hope were higher than ever, when suddenly, to the
consternation of everybody and to the wrath of his father, who was
already thinking of an honorable marriage for him which should still
further improve his prospects, he threw it all up and went into a
monastery. The immediate occasion of this extraordinary step was a
terrific thunder-storm which overtook him just outside the town when he
was returning from his visit home. In mortal dread of death, he threw
himself on the ground, crying to the patron saint of the miners, to whom
he had often turned in seasons of distress: "Help, dear Saint Anna! I will
become a monk." The vow so rashly made he hastened to put into
execution. Fearing lest he might repent, he made his preparations as
rapidly as he could, sold his books, including the costly "Corpus Juris"
with which he had been equipped for professional study by his proud
father, gave a farewell dinner to his friends, and, in spite of their pleas
and protestations, entered the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, on the
morning of the seventeenth of July, when he was only twenty-one years
old. (Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Martin Luther, The Man and His Work
[New York: The Century, 1911], 16-17)
Thus, from the date of the storm, July 2, 1505, he was enrolled in
the monastery in Erfurth:
Accordingly on the evening of the 17th of July, 1505,
summoning a number of his most intimate university associates
to meet in his room, he passed with them a pleasant musical and
convivial night; then bidding his friends and the world adieu, he
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entered on the following morning the Augustine monastery at
Erfurth. (Martin 1997, 33)
From this point forward, Luther was moving not only toward a
radical change in his own life, but in that of the Church as well
that we are recipients of to this very day.
4. In 1507, Luther was ordained into the priesthood, and in 1508,
he was sent to lecture at the University of Wittenberg, and while
there, he continued studying moral philosophy. In 1510, he was
sent to Rome to settle a monastic dispute that had arisen in his
Augustinian order. Luther had such excitement in his anticipated
visit, and he took a fellow monk. However, his exposure to the
reality of Rome was far from what he expected. What he saw
was the travesty of ‘carnal religion’ in its ugliest and filthiest
manifestation. On the other hand, this helped to prepare him for
the future conflict he was to have with Rome within the next
seven years:
The grand result of this Roman tour was, that it emancipated him
from many monkish prejudices, fatally shook his faith in the
immaculateness of the pontifical see, drove him to lean more
firmly than ever upon the Scriptures for support, and thus helped
largely to prepare him for that dread conflict with the merciless
and impious hierarchy of Rome which was shortly to be
inaugurated. (Ibid., 62)
However, before we become so indignant at the Rome of
Luther’s day, we should still keep in mind our own sinfulness
and compromise, repent quickly, and learn from the horrific
mistakes of the Roman church of the 15th and 16
th centuries. We
too can very easily slip into the same type of carnality and self-
centeredness if we do not guard our hearts and minds. This trip
to Rome, therefore, had a major impact on Luther, and it was a
leading contributor to his rebirth by the Holy Spirit and entering
into a saving relationship with Christ. On the other hand, Luther
was not specific as to just when his rebirth occurred, and there is
some controversy concerning the date of his true conversion, but
taking into account the order and impact of events surrounding
his life, it appears to have taken place between 1512-1516, at
some point after receiving his Doctorate of Theology in 1512. In
the Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Writings,
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we find Luther’s autobiographical account of his conversion.
Luther wrote this in 1545, about a year before his death, but the
overarching significance of his re-birth never faded from his
memory:
But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a
sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn't be sure
that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no,
rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I
did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got
angry at God. I said, "Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners,
lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by
every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why
does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and
through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?"
This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I
constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and
anxiously wanted to know what he meant.
I meditated night and day on those words until at last, by the
mercy of God, I paid attention to their context: "The justice of
God is revealed in it, as it is written: 'The just person lives by
faith.'" I began to understand that in this verse the justice of God
is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God, that is by
faith. I began to understand that this verse means that the justice
of God is revealed through the Gospel, but it is a passive
justice, i.e. that by which the merciful God justifies us by faith,
as it is written: "The just person lives by faith." All at once I felt
that I had been born again and entered into paradise
itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of
Scripture in a different light. I ran through the Scriptures from
memory and found that other terms had analogous meanings,
e.g., the work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power
of God, by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by
which he makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of
God, the glory of God. (Otto Clemen, ed. Luthers Werke in
Auswahl [Select Works of Luther], vol. 4, 6th
ed. [Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1967], 421-428)
F. The next Important figure of the Reformation we will look at is
John Calvin (July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564). Luther was almost 26
years old when Calvin was born, and he died when Calvin was
almost 35 years old. Thus, their lives and ministries overlapped, and
they are indeed the two major leaders of the European Reformation
in the 16th
century. The following is a brief summary of Calvin’s
early and formative years:
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Calvin came from lowly stock. His paternal grandfather was a
barrel-maker and boatman, his mother’s father an innkeeper. His
own father, Gerard, however, had improved his lot to become a
successful lawyer, with a practice which brought him into the
society of the local gentry and cathedral clergy. A side benefit
from these connections fell to John, in that he was to be educated
privately with the sons of the aristocratic De Montmors and was
also to be given one or two chaplaincies in the cathedral, which
serve as university grants.
Gerard planned a career in the church for his son. The path to
this career lay through the University of Paris. There he would
take the arts course and then go on to the nine years of study for
the theological doctorate. After that, he would trust the De
Montmors’ patronage and his own talents to reach the higher
levels of preferment.
The arts course was accomplished, or nearly so, by the mid-
1520s. Calvin was now an excellent scholar, a good Latinist,
proficient in the philosophy taught in those days, and qualified to
take up the intensive study of theology.
But suddenly all the plans fell through. Gerard changed his
mind and decided that John should achieve greatness in law and
not in the church. John, dutiful son that he was, acquiesced, and
the next five or six years saw him at the University of Orleans,
attaining some distinction in a study for which he had no love.
These were years which brought him into the ideals of the
Renaissance and probably into the evangelical faith as well. . . .
We do not know the time or the circumstances of Calvin’s
conversion to the evangelical faith. His own account in the
preface to his commentary on the Psalms is reticent and vague.
He writes:
God drew me from obscure and lowly beginnings and conferred on me
that most honorable office of herald and minister of the Gospel …What
happened first was that by an unexpected conversion he tamed to
teachableness a mind too stubborn for its years—for I was strongly
devoted to the superstitions of the Papacy that nothing less could draw
me from such depths of mire. And so this mere taste of true godliness
that I received set me on fire with such a desire to progress that I
pursued the rest of my studies more coolly, although I did not give
them up altogether. Before a year had slipped by anybody who longed
for a purer doctrine kept on coming to learn from me, still a beginner
and a raw recruit.
Plainly, for Calvin himself, the important thing was not when it
happened or how it happened, but the change itself and the
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results of the change. (T. H. Parker, “The Life and Times of John
Calvin,” Christian History [vol. 4, # 4, 1986] 7-8)
Probably the one thing that Calvin is best known for is his
Institutes of the Christian Religion. In his introduction to the
Institutes, Calvin states his aim and purpose for writing them:
Moreover, it has been my purpose in this labor to prepare and
instruct candidates in sacred theology for the reading of the
divine Word, in order that they may be able both to have easy
access to it and to advance in it without stumbling. For I believe I
have so embraced the sum of religion in all its parts, and have
arranged it in such an order, that if anyone rightly grasps it, it
will not be difficult for him to determine what he ought
especially to seek in Scripture, and to what end he ought to relate
its contents. If, after this road has, as it were, been paved, I shall
publish any interpretations of Scripture, I shall always condense
them, because I shall have no need to undertake long doctrinal
discussions, and to digress into commonplaces. In this way the
godly reader will be spared great annoyance and boredom,
provided he approach Scripture armed with a knowledge of the
present work, as a necessary tool. But because the program of
this instruction is clearly mirrored in all my commentaries, I
prefer to let the book itself declare its purpose rather than to
describe it in words. (John Calvin, Institutes of the Chrtistian
Religion, ed. John T. McNeil, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1
[Albany, OR: Ages Software, 1998]
As great and beneficial as the Institutes may have been in giving a
very clear and delineated picture of biblical theology, the one thing
that stands out in my mind about Calvin’s introduction, is that he
seems to convey the attitude that one cannot accurately and correctly
read and understand what the Bible is saying apart from his work,
which he sees as “a necessary tool.” This attitude spread from
Calvin’s pen and teaching, and it embraced a host of his followers as
well. The end result of this type of thinking is that one who follows
Calvin and embraces his theological perspective naturally begins to
look at the Scripture through the eyes of Calvin’s theology, versus
looking at Calvin, Luther, et al through the eyes of the Bible.
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Session Seven
VII. The Enlightenment
A. The time period that is referred to as the Enlightenment is
generally dated from ca. 1500-1800, and it was in large part spurred
on by the Protestant Reformation. During this period of time, great
upheavals of society began to occur that enveloped all aspects of
culture, from the religious to the economic, the political,
colonization, education, and military conflict and new weaponry.
The following is one of the best assessments that I have found that
succinctly encapsulates what occurred during this time period:
The reformation of the Christian Church, launched in 1517 by
the Augustinian friar Martin Luther (1483-1546), had profound
political, social, and economic as well as religious consequences
that redounded throughout the entire period. Religious beliefs
became conflated with national sentiment and political
ambitions, with economic goals and perceived social injustices;
and religious schism, civil and international wars, and domestic
revolts ensued. The Roman Catholic Church responded to calls
for reform with the establishment of new religious orders
(notably the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits); with the Holy Office,
which investigated heresy; and with the Council of Trent (1545-
63), which defined doctrine (notably on the issue of marriage) for
the next four centuries.
Meantime, the centuries-old European expansion accelerated.
Overseas expansion broadened the geographical horizons of
Europeans and brought them into confrontations with ancient
civilizations in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. These conflicts
led first to conquest, then to exploitations, and eventually to
economic changes in both Europe and overseas territories. For
example, gold and silver from Mexico and Peru which began to
flow into Europe in 1503 caused a continent-wide inflation
between 1550 and 1565 (though the peak period of Spanish
bullion imports was 1580-1620). American potatoes, tomatoes,
and maize (Indian corn) began to revolutionize Europeans' diet.
By 1575 Europe participated in the first truly global economy,
paying for Asian silks, spices, and porcelain, Persian carpets, and
Ottoman Turkish kilims with South American silver.
Furniture and house decor testified to rising bourgeois wealth,
to economic and cultural change: chairs; cupboards, dressers, and
sideboards that supported gold, silver, and pewterware and held
supplies of table and bed linens, laces, and brocades; canopied
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four-poster beds; and mirrors and paintings. Ceramic tile floors
were common by the 17th century, as were, in wealthy homes,
oak parquet floors often covered by Ottoman Turkish or Persian
rugs. Such luxuries were depicted in the paintings of
Ghirlandaio, Jan van Eyck, Holbein, and the Venetians
Carpaccio and Crivelli, reflecting the close commercial ties
between Venice and the Ottoman world. In the 16th century,
transparent glass windowpanes spread so rapidly that by the
1560s prosperous peasant homes had them, although in eastern
Europe, even the grandest houses continued to cover windows
with oiled paper. The indoor water closet (toilet), invented by the
Englishman Sir John Harrington in 1596, was a luxury
everywhere before the 18th century. By the mid-17th century, the
houses of wealthy Dutch merchants displayed a conspicuous
consumption.
The expansion of the Ottoman Turks into southeastern Europe
provoked great fears and preoccupied Europeans far more than
did “discoveries” and developments in Asia and the Americas.
The 17th century opened with agricultural and commercial
crises that had serious social and political consequences. Colder,
wetter weather meant shorter farming seasons, which in turn
meant smaller harvests, food shortages, and widespread
starvation. The output of textiles also declined. The Thirty Years'
War (1618-48) in Germany, which at some point involved most
of the states of Europe, proved the greatest economic disaster for
Germany before the 20th century. The widespread use of
gunpowder increased the costs and destructiveness of war while
reducing its glamour. To finance the larger armies that warfare
required, governments resorted to heavier taxation mainly on
overburdened peasantry, sparking revolts. To free themselves
from the restrictions of competing institutions (such as the
churches) or social groups (such as the nobilities), governments
claimed to possess sovereignty, the right to make law for all
people, a monopoly over the instruments of justice (the courts),
and the use of force (police and state armies). In the process two
patterns of government began to emerge in the early 17th
century: absolutism and constitutionalism.
Peasant and urban workers' revolts erupted frequently
between 1550 and 1650, cresting around 1648, because of bad
harvests that led to widespread starvation, extraordinary royal
and seigneurial taxation, and rampant pillaging by soldiers
during the Thirty Years' War. A new class structure was taking
shape with a growing group of landless wage laborers at the
bottom, and this process mobilized many groups in its early
phases. Radical outbursts in London, Lyons, Bordeaux, Naples,
Salerno, Palermo, Granada, Cordoba (where women led the
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rebellion), Salzburg, parts of the Swiss cantons, Lithuania, and
Moscow often had an egalitarian flavor and, in urban centers,
reflected the growth of class consciousness among wage
laborers. These revolts, in the towns in western Europe and in the
countryside in eastern Europe, constituted the most widespread
movements of social protest before 1848. (Peter N. Stearns, ed.,
The Encyclopedia of World History, 6th
ed. [Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2001], 283-284)
B. In the midst of this social upheaval, people were trying to figure
out who God is and just how He relates to this world we live in.
One of the ideas that began to emerge was called Deism: “The
earliest known use of the word ‘deist’ was by Pierre Viret, a disciple
of Calvin, in his Instruction chretienne (Christian Instruction – my
translation – Geneva, 1564), Vol. II, “Epistre” (“Letter” – my
translation – signed, Lyons, December 12, 1563). Viret regarded it
as an entirely new word that (he claimed) the deists wished to
oppose to ‘atheist’: according to him, the deist professes belief in
God as the creator of heaven and earth but rejects Jesus Christ and
his doctrines” (Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
vol. 1-2, “Deism,” by Ernest Campbell Mossner [New York:
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. & The Free Press, 1967], 327).
However, as time went by, the term came to be associated with those
“who follow no particular religion but only acknowledge the
existence of God, without any other article of faith. . . . The opinion
of those that only acknowledge one God, without any reception of
any revealed religion” (Ibid.). Thus, there began to arise among the
educated class in Europe a rejection of the only form of religious
authority they had been exposed to, Roman Catholicism, but yet
what they considered a respectable form of intellectual belief:
Beginning in the early sixteenth century, general contributions
to the development of deism include such broad movements as
anti-Trinitarianism, Unitarianism, secularism, anticlericalism,
Erastianism (the belief that the state was superior to the church in
ecclesiastical matters), Arminianism, and Socinianism (a
rationalist approach toward scriptural interpretation; an
acceptance of Jesus as the revelation of God, but only a man; the
separation of church and state; and a denial of hell, but a
selective resurrection of those who obeyed all of Jesus’
commandments – thus, a works orientation), the rise of sects, and
the general revolt against authority. It may be argued that all of
these currents and undercurrents were united in the increasing
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trend away from religious persecution and toward religious
toleration, the glorification of the natural powers of man, and the
endorsement of the right to think and to publish freely on all
religious and political subjects. (Ibid.)
As can be seen, all of this upheaval affected the spiritual dynamic of
Europe in that people were desperately looking for something to
give their lives meaning, purpose, and direction, and two aspects of
this search included religious and political freedom. Thus, out of
this milieu and conflation of religious and political ideas, beliefs,
and aims comes the beginning of the spiritual hunger for eternal
truth that in England ultimately led to the move of the Pilgrims to
the ‘New World’ in November, 1620. This ‘New World’ had only
been discovered by Columbus in 1492, just twenty-five years before
Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg,
Germany, thus initiating the Protestant Reformation! Therefore,
what the Enlightenment brought was just that, enlightenment in all
areas of life, which included most importantly the freedom to think,
search, and decide for oneself what one believes about life and all of
its intricacies. In addition, this period brought in the age of science
and discovery, which dismissed many misconceptions about the
universe that are today considered fundamental to our daily lives:
Finally, the Age of Reason sprang from the soil of a new faith
in law and order. Modern science arose in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries and filled men with visions of a new day of
peace and harmony. These pioneers of modern science forced
men to think in a new way about the universe: Copernicus (1473-
1543), who insisted that the sun, not the earth, was the center of
our universe; Johann Kepler (1571-1630), who concluded that
the sun emitted a magnetic force that moved the planets in their
courses; and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who made a telescope
to examine the planets and proved that the acceleration of falling
bodies is constant. (Shelley, 313)
C. In addition to the newly discovered laws of physics and science,
there was also developing a revived approach toward philosophical
and religious thought known as Skepticism. In some ways,
Skepticism is analogous to what today we would classify as ‘critical
thinking’; that is, rather than taking things at face value, one asks
probing questions as to why such a belief or position should be
believed or held. With regard to the Reformation, this was of
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critical importance, and along with Luther, there was another
Catholic scholar, Erasmus (1446-1536), who was also critical of the
moral abuses of the Roman Church, and he urged a return to
holiness in following Christ. However, Erasmus was not willing to
go as far as Luther in criticizing the foundational authority of the
Roman Church – i.e., the popes and councils – versus, simply
relying on the Scripture, but rather he appealed to a form of skeptical
reasoning, advocated and promoted by an ancient Greek writer namd
Sextus, in which Erasmus advocated simply accepting the Church’s
authority because it was far easier than trying to reestablish a form
of biblical authority alone. The ancient Greek writer Sextus (ca.
150-225 AD), whose theory Erasmus was following, advocated the
skeptical approach of one Pyrrho of Ellis (ca. 365-270 BC). Pyrrho
advocated a form of dialectic – that is, thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis – in which he argued that “the reasons in favor of a belief
are never better than those against (isostheneia – a situation of equal
strength), and that the only possible response to this is to stop
worrying (ataraxia – this comes from the Greek noun taraxe, which
means “tumult, commotion, and disturbance,” thus, with the “a”
attached to it, it means to be calm and at peace) and to live by
appearances” (Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to
Philosophy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], 733). In
essence, therefore, what Erasmus was advocating might be described
today as a form of relativism; that is, truth is relative to a given time
and situation, and in this case, it is too difficult to determine by
Scripture what is true of certain things, so, the route of least
resistance is to simply go along with the ‘tradition’ of the church for
the sake of ‘ataraxia’, and thus, let that be sufficient for one’s
questions. This can be seen in the following quote:
Later in his De Libero Arbitrio (Concerning the Free
Decision/Will – my translation – Basel, 1524), attacking Luther’s
view, Erasmus contended that the problem of free will was too
complex for humans to comprehend, and Scripture too difficult
to interpret on these matters. Therefore, he recommended the
skeptical attitude of suspension of judgment, along with
acceptance of the church’s view. Luther furiously attacked this
skeptical defense of Catholicism in his De Servo Arbitrio
(Concerning the Subjected/Enslaved Decision/Will – my
translation – Wittenberg, 1525) and insisted that a Christian
cannot be a skeptic (based on the Pyrrhonian idea of skepticism
described above, which is, you cannot really know the truth, so
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apply it in a relative sense to your own situation and be content –
i.e., a type of moral relativism – my analysis); that he must be
certain, not dubious, since salvation is at stake. Erasmus could
remain a genial doubter if he wished, but Luther warned him that
Judgment Day was to follow, and “Spiritus sanctus non est
Scepticus” (the Holy Spirit is not skeptical – my translation).
In the dispute between Erasmus and Luther a fundamental
problem that was to awaken a vital concern with skepticism was
raised, the problem of determining the criterion of ultimate
religious knowledge. At Leipzig, Luther had challenged the
church’s criterion: that of the pope, the councils, and tradition.
At the Diet of Worms he had proposed a subjective, private one
instead, that of the dictates of the Holy Spirit to each man’s
conscience. The ensuing battle to justify either the church’s or
the reformers’ criterion made this classical skeptical problem a
living issue. . . . Erasmus’ solution, that of suspending judgment
and accepting the Catholic view on faith or tradition, was later
developed into what is sometimes called Christian Pyrrhonism.
(Edwards, vol. 7-8, “Skepticism,” by Richard H. Popkin, 451)
Thus, this difference between Erasmus and Luther is a
microcosm of the conflict between those who were set free to read
and think for themselves, versus those who were not permitted to do
so, but were placed, metaphorically, in spiritual, mental, and
intellectual strait-jackets of oppression. On the other hand, with that
freedom to think and judge for oneself with regard to belief and
practice of a lifestyle, as with any movement, there was both good
and bad change. One of the things that emerged during this time in
both Europe, as well as the United States was the rise of witchcraft.
Once again, people were desperately looking for something to fill
the void and emptiness in their lives and to salve the sense of
meaninglessness that would encroach upon their mental and
emotional states of mind and thinking:
Witchcraft was an integral part of the mental climate of the age.
Educated as well as illiterate people (the French political
philosopher Jean Bodin [1530-96] and the English jurist Sir
Edward Coke [1552-1634] are just two examples of the former)
believed in the existence of witches. They were popularly
described as old women (but sometimes children and young
women) who convened for sabbath (midnight assemblies),
worshiped, engaged in sexual orgies, and made pacts with the
devil (thus renouncing Christian baptism), in return for which
they acquired powers to control natural forces such as storms,
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destroy crops, harm cattle, or incapacitate human genitals.
Almost all witches seemed to come from the lower levels of
society and were female: the poor, the aged, the senile, and those
least able to defend themselves. In the period 1470-1700, 5,417
women were executed (by burning or hanging) in the Swiss
Confederation; in 1559-1736, 1,000 women were executed in
England; and in 1561-1670, 3,229 women were executed in
southeastern Germany. (Stearns, 284)
In the midst of all this change, both good and bad, there was also
the wind of spiritual renewal that was blowing from Europe into
America during this time, which ultimately resulted in the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States of America.
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Session Eight
VIII. The First and Second Great Awakenings
A. From the time of 1620 when the first Pilgrims landed on the
shores of America to establish a community where they could
worship God freely, until today, 2008, there has been a constant
struggle to maintain that freedom and spiritual vitality. The
Massachusetts Bay Company became the organizational structure
that was responsible for settling Pilgrims in the Boston area, and
“between 1629 and 1642 some 25,000 Puritans migrated to New
England” (Shelley, 305). These colonists were viewed by England
as economic investments for the homeland, and thus, they had great
latitude and freedom for their religious beliefs and practices. But as
often occurs, the persecuted becomes the persecutor, and that is the
case with the MBC. Through an oversight in the charter of the
Colony by the British authorities, the MBC was an autonomous
entity, not subject to royal authority. Thus, from 1630-1684, the
MBC governed itself as an independent and self-governing
community, and they ultimately embraced the very thing they
opposed within the government of Great Britain, and that was an
oppressive, state religion that denied the freedom of worship: “Thus,
for two generations the saints in New England ruled by a policy of
religious conformity even as the same policy proved futile in old
England. Failure to attend church services, denial of Christ’s
resurrection, or infant baptism, and irreverence for the Bible could
bring severe punishment” (Ibid.).
B. In addition to all of this, there was the added significance of
political control by the Puritans:
Puritans were in a position to say which laws were for “the
public good” because they had secured the charter granting them
the right to settle in New England. Thus, in their colony in
Massachusetts they had the authority to permit only freemen to
vote for the governor and magistrates, and to insist that all
freemen by church members. So the vote and public morality
were controlled by the churches. (Shelley, 344)
This forced spirituality ultimately became a charade, as more and
more non-believers became a part of the church without any true
conversion. This in turn led to spiritual compromise and deadness
within the churches themselves:
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The Puritan “holy experiment” – blending belief in a church of
the truly converted with the idea of a Christian state – seemed
destine to fail almost from the start. There are problems in
operating any church on earth when only God knows who the
real members are. Not everyone in Massachusetts or
Connecticut could boldly testify of experienced grace. As the
zeal of the New England founders cooled, fewer men and women
could bear public witness to grace in their souls. To keep
membership from shrinking drastically, many churches in 1662
had to settle for the Half-Way Covenant. Under this policy the
“unawakened” cold enjoy a kind of partial membership,
baptizing their children and joining in congregational activities,
but not taking full Communion. This was enough church
affiliation for most political and social purposes, so that
gradually the “saints” sank to a tiny minority. When a new
charter in 1691 based the right to vote on property rather than on
church membership, New England had reached a spiritual
crossroads. (Ibid.)
As a consequence of this type of forced ‘religious compliance’, a
spiritual deadness began to spread throughout the colonies. Thus, by
the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18
th century in America,
there began to emerge a dearth of genuine spirituality with regard to
people having a living and vital relationship with Jesus as their Lord
and Savior. There was still the formal aspect of religion, and people
honored the idea of accountability to God with respect to civil
government and its laws. However, such a concept can only go so
far until it too begins to break down in the lifestyles of the people
that will in turn then begin to affect all aspects of society, from the
basic civil laws, to business and economic conduct, to family life,
and to the overall moral compass of a community:
Shortly after the dawn of the eighteenth century, two types of
Puritan heirs were visible. The spiritual heritage fell to the
children of the Great Awakening. The call for personal
conversion as the basis of church conversion soon echoed
throughout the Connecticut River valley through the preaching of
Jonathan Edwards.
The “worldly puritans” continued the Puritan sense of civic
responsibility and concern for lawful government. Even when
they could no longer feel the dread of living before an awesome
Lord of history, these colonialists still held that empires rose or
fell depending on whether men obeyed or disobeyed the designs
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of Divine Providence. They believed, for example, that God
smiled upon the quest for liberty. (Ibid., 345)
C. The First Great Awakening in America was part of an overall
move of God’s Spirit that spanned the Atlantic Ocean and affected
both Europe, as well as America, and it is generally dated from the
1730’s to the 1770’s:
The Age of Reason saw a dramatic spiritual renewal in
Western Christianity called the Evangelical Awakening. The
movement interlaced by personal ties of the leaders, but three
regions were significantly changed: Germany by the rise of
Pietism, the British Isles by the preaching of the Methodists, and
the American colonies by the impact of the Great Awakening. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The 1730’s in America, Scotland, Wales, and England saw a
sudden explosion of apostolic concern to preach the gospel to the
unconverted. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) in Northampton,
Massachusetts; Ebenezer (1680-1754) and Ralph (1685-1752)
Erskine in Scotland; Howell Harris (1714-1773) in Wales; and
George Whitfield (1714-1770) in England all preceded John
Wesley (1703-1791) in the evangelical awakening. (Ibid., 331-
332)
In America, the First Great Awakening played a major part in the
formation of our government, which can be seen in the Declaration
of Independence, as well as in the Bill of Rights in our Constitution.
As Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he
wrote:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary
for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the powers
of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of
Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
One of the converts in the First Great Awakening was the mother of
Isaac Backus, who subsequently opened up her home for prayer
meetings and Bible studies and teaching. At 17 years of age in
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1741, in Norwich, CT, Backus himself was born-again, and he soon
began to be a part of evangelizing his fellow New Englanders. At
27 years of age in 1751, he formed the First Baptist Church of
Middleborough, MA: “Thus the stage was set for Backus’s
significant role in American history as advocate of religious
freedom. More than any other man he formulated and publicized the
evangelical position of church and state that was ultimately to
prevail throughout America” (Shelley, 348). Backus, therefore,
played a major role in the formation and inclusion of the First
Amendment to the Constitution, which is part of what is commonly
called the Bill of Rights:
Basic to the Baptist position was the belief that all direct
connections between the state and institutionalized religion must
be broken in order that America might become a truly Christian
country. Backus, like Jefferson and Madison, believed that
“Truth is great and will prevail.” But unlike his ‘enlightened
colleagues’, by truth he meant the revealed doctrines of
Scripture. His fundamental assumption was that “God has
appointed two different kinds of government in the world which
are different in their nature and ought never to be confounded”;
one is civil, the other ecclesiastical.
“Our civil legislature,” said Backus, does not function as “our
representatives in religious affairs.” They were elected as
representatives for civil or secular affairs, and when they act in
ecclesiastical affairs, they meddle in matters upon which their
constituents did not empower them to legislate. Furthermore,
legislative power is inappropriate for faith. “Religion is a
voluntary obedience unto God which force cannot promote.”
By resisting established churches the revivalists never
intended to surrender their dream for a Christian America. They
had found in the Great Awakening the answer to their needs.
The kingdom of God would come to America if a majority of the
citizens could be persuaded to submit voluntarily to the laws of
God. Revivals were God’s means to that end. (Shelley, 348-349)
The point to be made with Backus’ ministry is that he was an
evangelical pastor whose first priority was the preaching and
ministry of the Word of God to the lost, and to the building up of the
body of Christ, but he was also very involved politically in the
formation of our country’s Constitution, and in particular with the
First Amendment to our Constitution, which is part of what is called
the Bill of Rights. Backus tirelessly confronted the Massachusetts
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legislature concerning the matters of religious liberty, and as a result
of his spiritual and political profile in Massachusetts, he was elected
to be a delegate from Massachusetts to the first Contintntal Congress
in 1774, and in 1788, he as a delegate from Middleborough to the
Massachusetts state convention that ratified the United States
Constitution. Thus, if Backus and other committed Christians such
as he had not become ‘politically involved’ at the inception of our
nation’s constitutional government, then we might not have the First
Amendment which guarantees us the religious freedom we have
today! Therefore, if you want to keep this freedom, as well as all of
the other freedoms delineated in the Bill of Rights, then you too had
better become involved today! The idea that such involvement is
‘unspiritual’ is misinformed and ludicrous at its very best. Do not
hide behind the pseudo-spiritual veneer of God’s sovereignty in
attempting to justify your political inactivity as a believer, because
such a veneer is easily penetrable with the truth. We are the salt and
light, and if we do not stand for the truth in our country, NO ONE
ELSE WILL!
D. The Second Great Awakening is generally thought to have
occurred from ca. 1800 all the way up through the 1870’s. Just these
two moves of God alone in our country are staggering in and of
themselves, because from these came the establishment of the
greatest freedom experienced by any people in the history of man,
and it has all been directly based on the spiritual blessings of God
poured out on a nation of people who sought to serve and follow
Him. Even in the midst of our sins and failures as a people, both
individually and corporately, the call of brokenness and repentance
over our sins, based on the grid of our moral decisions being God’s
Word, has been the stabilizing force that has given us victory in war,
prosperity in material goods through success in business, and most
importantly, a spiritual foundation for personal, family, community,
and national identity and unity. Without these qualities being in our
lives, we become a narcissistic society, and we will eventually
destroy ourselves. Thus, we must return to the biblical foundation of
our country that has given us the societal moorings that have
established us as the freest people in the world! The key to that
foundation as believers is found in Luke 9:23-24: “And He was
saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever
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wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My
sake, he is the one who will save it.’”
1. During the Second Great Awakening, not only did very
positive results occur, but also some negative. There were a
variety of political and religious events that emerged from this
time period that the results are still with us today. Politically, we
had a great civil war, where 600,000 people gave their lives for
what they believed from both the North and the South. Slavery
had to be ended as it had become an egregious affront against
humanity, but that was not the sum total of what the war was
about, especially from the southern perspective. When the war
broke out in 1861, based on the census of 1851, less than 6% of
whites and freed slaves even owned slaves; less than 3% owned
four slaves or less; and ca. 2000 individuals owned 100 or more
slaves (Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., vol. 29, “United States
of America,” 227). Thus, for 90% of those fighting in the war for
the South, it was not to retain slavery, but rather to protect their
freedoms they felt were being threatened by the encroachment of
federalism. In my own family, my great-grandfather on my
father’s side fought with the 1st Louisiana Infantry with Jackson
and Lee at Chancellorsville, Antietam, and the Wilderness
Campaign. However, he, like a vast majority of southern
patriots, did not own a slave, and he was also opposed to slavery,
as were Lee and Jackson, who also knew that slavery had to end.
On the other hand, the dissolution of the Union, whereby one
section would be free, and another would retain slavery, was
totally unacceptable to many believers in the north, and this
Christian opposition to slavery came to be known as
abolitionism. I can only say that if I were a slave at that time, I
would have unequivocally wanted my freedom and fought for it.
Thus, a horrible and costly civil war was fought, but a wrong
began to be corrected, and it was not until the 1960’s that
African-Americans in our country finally gained full access to the
American dream of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
with the abolishment of institutional segregation.
2. During this same time frame, many religious groups emerged
that are at variance with orthodox evangelicalism in varying
degrees.
a. Mormonism – Mormonism began with Joseph Smith, and the
following is a brief summary of its origins:
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Mormonism began with Joseph Smith Jr. who was born on Dec.
23, 1805, in Vermont. He was the fourth child of Lucy and
Joseph Smith. Joseph senior was known as a money digger and
sought after buried treasure, particularly that of Captain Kidd.
His mother was highly superstitious.
Joseph Smith Jr. stated that he was disturbed by all the
different denominations of Christianity and wondered which was
true. In 1820, when he was 14, he went into the woods to pray
concerning this and allegedly God the Father and Jesus appeared
to him and told him not to join any of the denominational
churches.
Three years later, on Sept. 21, 1823, when he was 17 years
old, an angel called Moroni, who was supposed to be the son of
Mormon, the leader of the people called the Nephites who had
lived in the Americas, appeared to him and told him that he had
been chosen to translate the book of Mormon which was
compiled by Moroni's father around the 4th century. The book
was written on golden plates hidden near where Joseph was then
living in Palmyra, New York. Joseph Smith said that on Sept. 22,
1827 he received the plates and the angel Moroni instructed him
to begin the translation process. The translation was finally
published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. Joseph claimed that
during this translation process, John the Baptist appeared to him
and ordained him to accomplish the divine work of restoring the
true church by preaching the true gospel which, allegedly, had
been lost from the earth.
The Book of Mormon is supposed to be the account of people
who came from the Middle-East to the Americas. It covers the
period of about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D. It tells of the Jaredites,
people from the Tower of Babel who came to central America
but perished because of their own immorality. It also describes
some Jews who fled persecution in Jerusalem and came to
America led by a man called Nephi. The Jews divided into two
groups known as the Nephites and Lamanites who fought each
other. The Nephites were defeated in 428 A.D. The Lamanites
continued and are known as the American Indians. The Book of
Mormon is the account of the Nephite leader, Mormon,
concerning their culture, civilization, and appearance of Jesus to
the Americas.
After the publication of the Book of Mormon, Mormonism
began to grow. Because their religion was so deviant from
Christianity, i.e., plurality of gods, polygamy (Joseph is said to
have had 27 wives), etc., persecution soon forced them to move
from New York to Ohio, then to Missouri, and finally to Nauvoo,
Illinois. After being accused of breaking some laws in Nauvoo
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(for destroying a printing press that was publishing harmful
information on Mormonism), Joseph and his brother Hyrum
ended up in jail. A mob later broke into the jail and killed Joseph
and his brother.
After the shooting, the church divided into two groups: One
led by his widow which went back to Independence Missouri.
They are known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints. They claim to be the true Church and lay
claim to the legal succession of the church presidency which was
bestowed upon Joseph's son by Joseph Smith himself. The other
group was led by Brigham Young and they went to Utah where,
in 1847, they ended up in Salt Lake and founded Salt Lake City.
Brigham had 25 wives and accumulated much wealth.
(http://www.carm.org/lds/beginning.htm)
b. Jehovah’s Witnesses – The following is brief history of
the JW’s:
The Jehovah's Witnesses was begun by Charles Taze Russell in
1872. He was born on February 16, 1852, the son of Joseph L.
and Anna Eliza Russell. He had great difficulty in dealing with
the doctrine of eternal hell fire and in his studies came to deny
not only eternal punishment, but also the Trinity, and the deity of
Christ and the Holy Spirit. When Russell was 18, he organized a
Bible class in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1879 he sought to
popularize his aberrant ideas on doctrine. He co-published The
Herald of the Morning magazine with its founder, N. H. Barbour
and by 1884 Russell controlled the publication and renamed it
The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom, and founded
Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society (now known as the Watch
Tower Bible and Tract Society). The first edition of The
Watchtower magazine was only 6,000 copies each month. Today
the Witnesses' publishing complex in Brooklyn, New York,
churns out 100,000 books and 800,000 copies of its two
magazines--daily!
Russell claimed that the Bible could be only understood
according to his interpretations. A dangerous arrangement since
he controlled what was written in the Watchtower
magazine. This kind of assertion is typical among leaders of cult
religions.
After the death of Russell on Oct. 31, 1916, a Missouri
lawyer named Joseph Franklin Rutherford took over the
presidency of the Watch Tower Society which was known then
as the International Bible Students Association. In 1931 he
changed the name of the organization to "The Jehovah's
Witnesses."
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After Rutherford's death, Nathan Knorr took over. After
Knorr, Frederick William Franz became president.
The Society was led by Mr. Henschel who died in 2003. The
group has over 4 million members world wide. The Watchtower
Society statistics indicate that 740 house calls are required to
recruit each of the nearly 200,000 new members who join every
year.
The Jehovah's Witnesses have several ‘book studies' each
week. The members are not required to attend, but there is a level
of expectation that gently urges converts to participate. It is
during these ‘book studies' that the Jehovah's Witness is
constantly exposed to counter Christian teachings. The average
Jehovah's Witness, with his constant Watchtower indoctrination,
could easily pummel the average Christian when it comes to
defending his beliefs.
The Jehovah's Witnesses vehemently portray the doctrine of
the Trinity as pagan in origin and that Christendom, as a whole,
has bought the lie of the devil. Along with denying the Trinity is
an equally strong denial of the deity of Christ, the deity of the
Holy Spirit, the belief in hell, and eternal conscious punishment
in hell. (http://www.carm.org/jw/history.htm)
One other very interesting aspect of the JW’s is their view of
Russell’s writings. The following is a chilling quote, but it is
one that can be applied to all cults:
. . . Not only do we find that people cannot see the divine plan in
studying the Bible by itself, but we see, also, that if anyone lays
the “Scripture Studies” aside (these were written by Russell as
directions to the truth of Scripture – i.e., he is a “spiritual one,”
and only he can lead people to the real truth of salvation) even
after he has used them, after he has become familiar with them,
after he has read them for ten years – if he then lays them aside
and ignores them and goes to the Bible alone, though he has
understood his Bible for ten years, our experience shows that
within two years he goes into darkness. On the other hand, if he
had merely read the “Scripture Studies” with their references and
had not read a page of the Bible as such, he would be in the light
at the end of two years, because he would have the light of the
Scriptures. (Anthony A. Hoekema, The Four Major Cults [Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970], 227)
c. Seventh Day Adventists – The following is a brief history of
the Seventh Day Adventists:
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Modern Seventh Day Adventism traces its origins back to the
early 1800's to Mr. William Miller (1782-1849) of Low
Hampton, New York. Mr. Miller had converted from deism to
Christianity in 1816 and became a Baptist. He was an avid
reader, dedicated to God's word, and sought to reconcile apparent
biblical difficulties raised by deists. He relied heavily on the
Cruden's Concordance in his studies and developed a focus on
the imminent return of Jesus. He began preaching at the age of
50.
The time was right. America was hot with discussions on the
return of Christ. As a result, many thousands (called Millerites)
accepted his idea that Jesus would return in the year covering
1843-1844. He had arrived at this date based upon a study of
Daniel 8:14 which says, "And he said to me, "For 2,300 evenings
and mornings; then the holy place will be properly restored." He
interpreted the 2300 evenings and mornings to be years and
counted forward from 457 BC when the commandment to
rebuild Jerusalem was given (Dan. 9:24-25).1 When his initial
predictions failed, he adjusted his findings to conclude that Jesus
would return on March 21, 1844 and then later on October 22,
1844. After these too failed, Miller quit promoting his ideas on
Jesus' return and the "Millerites" broke up.
On the morning following the "Great Disappointment" of
October 22, 1844, a Mr. Hiram Edson claimed to have seen a
vision. He said that he saw Jesus standing at the altar of heaven
and concluded that Miller had been right about the time, but
wrong about the place. In other words, Jesus' return was not to
earth, but a move into the heavenly sanctuary as is referenced in
Heb. 8:1-2.
Mr. Joseph Bates (1792-1872), a retired sea captain and a
convert to "Millerism" then began to promote the idea of Jesus
moving into the heavenly sanctuary. He published a pamphlet
which greatly influenced James (1821-1881) and Ellen White
(1827-1915). It is these three who were the driving force behind
the SDA movement.
Numerous reports state that Ellen G. White (1827-1915) saw
visions from an early age. Such was the case shortly after the
Great Disappointment. Mrs. White claimed to see in a vision of
a narrow path where an angel was guiding Adventists.
Subsequent visions resulted in interpretations of the three angels
in Rev. 14:6-11 as being in 1843-1844 as the hour of God's
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judgment; the fall of Babylon signified by Adventists leaving
various churches, and admonitions against Sunday worship.
Today, the SDA church is very evangelical with mission
efforts world wide, numerous publications, and many educational
facilities. It claims over 8 million members world wide and is
growing rapidly with its educational, TV, Radio, and publication
based outreaches. (http://www.carm.org/sda/history.htm)
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Session Nine
IX. Marxism/Leninism/Secular Humanism/Post-Modernism/Emergent
Church
A. The following is a brief history of Karl Marx’s life and writings: Marx was born on May 5, 1818, and he died March 14, 1883.
The son of a lawyer, he studied law and philosophy; he rejected
the idealism of Hegel but was influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach
and Moses Hess. His editorship (1842-43) of the Rheinische
Zeitung ended when the paper was suppressed. In 1844 he met
Engels in Paris, beginning a lifelong collaboration. With Engels
he wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848 – I provide this as a
handout) and other works that broke with the tradition of
appealing to natural rights to justify social reform, invoking
instead the laws of history leading inevitably to the triumph of
the working class. Exiled from Europe after the Revolutions of
1848, Marx lived in London, earning some money as a
correspondent for the New York Tribune but dependent on
Engels's financial help while working on his monumental work
Das Kapital (3 vol., 1867-94), in which he used dialectical
materialism to analyze economic and social history; Engels
edited vol. 2 and 3 after Marx's death. With Engels, Marx helped
found (1864) the International Workingmen's Association, but
his disputes with the anarchist Mikhail Babuknin eventually led
to its breakup. Marxism has greatly influenced the development
of socialist thought; further, many scholars have considered
Marx a great economic theoretician and the founder of economic
history and sociology.
(http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/marx.html)
One very fascinating observation about Marx and Engels’
relationship is that Engels’ father was a very wealthy industrialist in
England, and toward the end of Marx’s life, if it had not been for the
support of Engels, who got his support from his wealthy father,
Marx and his family would have utterly disintegrated. The
following is a brief account of that fact:
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was a lifelong companion and
collaborator of Karl Marx, working with him to develop his
theories on dialectical materialism, historical materialism and
communism. Whereas Marx wrote mostly on political issues,
Engels had a broader perspective and also wrote on politics and
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aesthetics. Engels was born into a wealthy industrial family and
for a while he even worked in his father's business, but it wasn't
long before he began to develop more radical ideas regarding the
nature of economic and political relationships, probably due to
the influence of the "Young Hegelians" philosophical movement.
Under the pseudonym Friedrich Oswald he wrote radical articles
for a number of different puoblications. After a time Engels
became involved with a movement to extend sufferage for
English textile workers, known as Chartism. During this period
he came to think that both history and politics could be best
understood through the lens of how society developed
economically. He also concluded that social evils in general were
caused by the institution of private property and the use of
private property to exploit commoners. In 1844 he went to visit
Karl Marx, a man who had been publishing works which
expressed sympathies towards communism. It was at this time
that Engels realized that they had both, independently, arrived at
nearly identical views regarding economics, society and the
rights of workers. They worked together to write Das Manifest
der kommunistischen Partei in 1848 (The Communist Manifesto)
and, one of the reasons both were forced to flee Prussia. Prussian
authorities tried to put pressure on the British government to
expel Marx and Engels for their radical ideas, but Prime
Minister, John Russell also took a liberal position with regards to
free speech and simply refused. While there Engels took a
position with Ermen and Engels, his father's textile firm, and
used position to provide financial support to Marx -
unfortunately, that support wasn't enough to keep the Marx
family out of extreme poverty. The two continued to work
together closely until Marx died in 1883.
(http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/political/bldef_
engelsfriedrich.htm)
With regard to Marx’s view of God and man, “For Marx, then,
humanity is God. We created God in our own image. We created
religion in order to worship ourselves. The notion that God is
merely our projection is contained in Marx’s assertion that man
‘looked for a superhuman being in the fantastic reality of heaven and
found nothing there but the reflection of himself’” (David A.
Noebel, Understanding the Times, 2nd
ed., [Manitou Springs, CO:
Summit Press, 2006], 66). However, in Marx’s dialectical
materialism, man is indeed worshipping himself because man is the
matter of the dialectical utopia that Marx envisions. Thus, “Because
Marx believes that we are God, he also believes we must seize
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control of reality and shape it to our specifications” (Ibid.). Thus,
Marxism is the ultimate form of self-deification in that man is seen
as God who shapes and forms himself into the divine creature he
wants to be. The major problem with this thinking is that IT
ABSOLUTELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY DOES NOT WORK!
Just look at the former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, China,
etc., and in addition, a great many of the Communist sympathizers in
this country are incredibly wealthy. The following also represents
the tremendous hypocrisy and blindness contained in self-
proclaimed Marxists in this country:
John LeBoutillier, president of Accuracy in Academia and author
of Harvard Hates America, said he entered Harvard as a
moderate but left a confirmed conservative. One of his first
professors at Harvard, a Marxist sympathizer, advocated a 100
percent inheritance tax as a way of eliminating inequality of
wealth. LeBoutillier soon learned that the professor maintained
an opulent lifestyle supported by his wife , the heiress to the
Singer sewing machine company fortune. LeBoutillier said that
“this was typical of the hypocrisy routinely practiced by leftists
at Harvard.” (David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times
[Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1991], 20).
B. Secular Humanism can best be described by the Humanist
Manifestos I, II, & III in the following handouts.
C. Post/Modernism can best be described by the following handout.
D. The Emergent Church can best be described by the following
handout.
Conclusion – I pray that this study has been helpful and beneficial to all who
have attended, but most importantly I pray that God will spur all of you
on to be critical hearers, thinkers, and readers who will not let someone
else do your believing for you, but you will know for certain what you
believe and why you believe it. There will be many other things to
come in the future and challenge your faith, and I must tell you that
unless you are determined to seek the truth in God’s Word and be
diligent in your prayer life and abiding in the Word, you may indeed be
overcome by all of the opposition you will face in every quarter of your
life. Therefore, this is both a call to diligence, as well as an
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encouragement to comfort that I continually refer to in Romans 8:26-
39:
And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we
do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself
intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27
and He
who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is,
because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28
¶ And we know that God causes all things to work together for
good to those who love God, to those who are called according to
His purpose. 29
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to
become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the
first-born among many brethren; 30
and whom He predestined,
these He also called; and whom He called, these He also
justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. 31
¶
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is
against us? 32
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered
Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us
all things? 33
Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is
the one who justifies; 34
who is the one who condemns? Christ
Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the
right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35
Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36
Just as it is written, "For Thy sake we are being put to death all
day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered." 37
But
in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who
loved us. 38
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, 39
nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord.
Two other passages that are of great importance to us with regard to the
days in which we live and our overwhelming victory in Jesus Christ are
II Corinthians 4:7-11; 6:1-10. In both of these, Paul, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is laying out for us our call in Jesus
Christ, wherein is life and victory, but he also emphasizes the cost
involved to gain that life and victory – not by our corrupt works of our
supposed righteousness, but rather by the indwelling power of God’s
Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing
greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves;
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8 ¶ we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but
not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but
not destroyed; 10
always carrying about in the body the dying of
Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 11
For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death
for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in
our mortal flesh. (II Corinthians 4:7-11)
And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive
the grace of God in vain-- 2 for He says, "At the acceptable time I
listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you";
behold, now is "the acceptable time," behold, now is "the day of
salvation "-- 3 giving no cause for offense in anything, in order
that the ministry be not discredited, 4 but in everything
commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance,
in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, 5 in beatings, in
imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, 6 in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy
Spirit, in genuine love, 7 in the word of truth, in the power of
God; by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the
left, 8 by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report;
regarded as deceivers and yet true; 9 as unknown yet well-
known, as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to
death, 10
as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making
many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things. (II
Corinthians 6:1-10)
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